Funding Immigrant Organizations:
Suburban Free-riding and Local Civic Presence
Els de Graauw, Baruch College, City University of New York*
[email protected]
Shannon Gleeson, University of California, Santa Cruz
[email protected]
Irene Bloemraad, University of California, Berkeley
[email protected]
June 2012
*
We are indebted to Karthick Ramakrishnan for advice and assistance, to Claude Fischer, Margaret
Weir, and members of the UC-Berkeley Interdisciplinary Immigration Workshop, to Nij Tontisirin for GIS
support, and to the following organizations for financial support: the Nonprofit Academic Centers
Council, the Ford Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Hauser Center for Nonprofit
Organizations at Harvard University, and the Wellman Family Faculty Fund and former Institute for the
Study of Social Change at the University of California, Berkeley. Authors’ names are listed in reverse
alphabetical order; they are equal co-authors.
Executive Summary
Research and Public Policy Question
When the federal government launched the War on Poverty almost fifty years ago, it sought to
improve the situation of poor people and promote the empowerment of marginalized
communities. Social policy shifted to a model of public-private partnership where government
funding went to local nonprofit organizations to provide services to the disadvantaged. How is
this model faring in today’s “new geography” of poverty and immigration? Suburban poverty
has been growing rapidly in recent decades, as has the number of immigrants living in the United
States. Indeed, the changing geography of poverty and immigration are linked: the foreign born
are, on average, poorer than U.S.-born citizens, and today half of all immigrants living in
metropolitan areas reside in suburbs. Many newcomers have eschewed the traditional immigrant
gateway cities, moving to “new” gateway destinations and suburbs. How do suburbs and new
gateway cities respond to foreign-born disadvantaged residents? Do their local governments
promote public-private partnerships with immigrant-focused organizations that advocate for and
provide services to immigrants?
Evidence and Study Design
This is a multi-year study of how four different types of cities in the San Francisco Bay region—
a continuous immigrant gateway city (San Francisco), a 21st century immigrant gateway city
(San Jose), a large suburban immigrant city (Fremont), and a smaller suburban immigrant city
(Mountain View)—support immigrant organizations. We examined how local government
officials conceptualize their responsibility to immigrant residents and we assess the financial
resources they allocate through the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program, a
legacy of the public-private partnership model launched by the War on Poverty. We draw on
extensive fieldwork to compare the four cities, including 142 in-depth interviews with
community organization representatives and local government leaders, a database of registered
501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations, and government reports of municipal funding allocations for
fiscal years 2004-07.
Findings and Explanations
Our research shows significant inequality in public funding for immigrant organizations across
the region. Although a greater proportion of residents in the suburban cities of Fremont and
Mountain View are foreign-born than in the central cities of San Francisco and San Jose, neither
suburb awarded any CDBG monies to an immigrant organization in 2004-07. The lack of
funding is even more surprising when we consider that the CDBG program targets organizations
that serve low- and moderate-income persons. While the two suburban cities have, on average, a
lower percentage of poor people than the two central cities, the foreign born make up a larger
proportion of the poor population in these smaller municipalities. In contrast, the city of San
Francisco funded immigrant organizations at proportions in line with the percentage of
immigrants living in the city and the proportion of foreign born among the city’s poor
population. The situation in San Jose stood in-between: San Jose funded some immigrant
organizations, but provided less money to fewer organizations than we would expect given the
city’s demographics.
1
Understanding Funding Inequalities and Suburban Free-riding
Existing scholarship explains immigrant-directed public-private partnerships through a political
exchange model: local officials make rational decisions to fund community organizations to
achieve political goals. Not surprisingly, researchers find that migrants who move to a liberal or
progressive municipality receive a warmer welcome than those who face anti-immigrant
politicians committed to small government and limited public services. We demonstrate,
however, that even in a politically progressive place like the Bay Area, public support for
immigrant organizations can vary dramatically by locality. Politics, alone, cannot explain public
outreach to immigrant groups.
We instead emphasize the importance of immigrant civic infrastructures and officials’
taken-for-granted social constructions of legitimate public policy target populations. San
Francisco’s continuous exposure to immigration over the 20th century, as compared to San
Jose’s more recent experiences, has produced a vibrant civic infrastructure of immigrant
organizations that have the experience, networks, and expectation that they should be partners
with city officials. We find that government officials in these two central cities draw on a
narrative of the city as an immigrant destination and a history of public-private partnerships to
justify including immigrants in social policy.
In comparison, proximity to central cities produces a dynamic of “suburban free-riding”
in Fremont and Mountain View. Suburban officials presume that immigrants can rely on the
resources and services provided in other jurisdictions, in effect free-riding on the funding that
neighboring central cities disperse to immigrant organizations and the services those nonprofits
deliver. While suburban officials in a politically progressive region such as the Bay Area
celebrate diversity, when it comes to public-private partnerships, they also employ a variety of
narrative strategies to rationalize excluding immigrant organizations from funding. In some
cases, immigrants appear completely invisible from officials’ conceptions of the target
population for municipal support, while in many others they are viewed as too transnational, too
rich, or too organized to need public support or, conversely, they are perceived as too insular, too
small, or too unorganized to want it. Our research suggests that a key obstacle to funding
immigrant organizations lies in the fact that immigrants are not seen as sufficiently legitimate
interlocutors and civic partners.
Implications
Our findings underscore the importance of a regional lens to questions of nonprofit funding and
immigrant integration. Suburban destinations that are located close to a traditional immigrant
gateway city can take limited responsibility for foreign-born residents.
Geographers,
sociologists, and students of urban politics increasingly highlight the rise of “ethnoburbs” and
“edge gateways” as a critical frontier for research and public policy, but we show that elected
and non-elected government officials in immigrant suburbs have yet to come to terms with their
cities’ changing demography, even if their political ideology welcomes diversity. Future
research on new immigrant destinations must therefore move beyond simple juxtapositions
between progressive and anti-immigrant localities. Instead, scholars need to consider how
characteristics such as a city’s size, immigrant history, and location in a metropolitan region
affect the decisions of municipal officials to support the civic infrastructure of immigrant
communities.
Future studies should also assess how broadly our findings hold in areas with different
immigration histories and regional dynamics. There is evidence that suburban free-riding is
2
widespread around traditional gateway cities, such as New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
Dynamics might vary, however, in regions where the dominant central city is not a traditional
immigrant gateway, such as Washington, D.C. or Atlanta. For welfare state researchers, these
findings reinforce arguments about the spatial mismatch between the places where disadvantaged
residents live and the distribution of public and private resources for combating poverty. For
scholars of immigration, funding disparities support the contention that researchers must
distinguish between different types of immigrant-receiving jurisdictions when studying the “new
geography” of immigrant settlement.
3
Introduction
When the U.S. federal government launched the War on Poverty almost fifty years ago, it sought
to improve the situation of poor people and promote the empowerment of marginalized
communities. Social policy shifted to a model of public-private partnerships where government
funding went to local nonprofit organizations and community action agencies to provide services
to the disadvantaged, especially African Americans and the urban poor (Grønbjerg 2001;
Marwell 2004; Reckhow and Weir 2012). The ongoing privatization and devolution of public
services in the 1970s and 1980s further transformed the relationship between public institutions
and the nonprofit sector. Local nonprofits became key players in service provision and
government funding became an indispensable resource for civil society organizations (Allard
2009; Salamon 1999; Smith and Lipsky 1993). Nonprofits also became advocates (Minkoff
1995; Walker 1991); various scholars argue that contemporary nonprofits are uniquely situated
to understand and promote the issues of vulnerable populations (Berry with Arons 2005; de
Graauw 2008, 2012; Walker and McCarthy 2010). Given the prevalence and importance of the
public-private partnership model—one that provides critical human services and facilitates civic
and political voice—which organizations receive government support and why?
We pose this question within the context of a “new geography” of poverty and
immigration in the United States. Although the poverty rate has remained high in central cities,
suburbs housed a larger number of poor people in 2009, and more than two-thirds of net growth
in the poor population from 2000 to 2009 occurred in suburbs (Kneebone 2010: 2; Kneebone and
Garr 2010). Renewed immigration has also generated demographic transformations: the foreignborn population grew from just five percent in 1970 to thirteen percent in 2010 (Gibson and Jung
2006; U.S. Census Bureau 2011). Many of these newcomers moved to “new” gateway cities,
suburbs, and rural areas rather than traditional immigrant gateways. Indeed, the changing
geography of poverty and immigration are linked: the foreign born are, on average, poorer than
U.S.-born citizens, and today half of all immigrants living in metropolitan areas reside in suburbs
(Singer 2004; Singer, Hardwick, and Brettell 2008).1 How do the new immigrant suburbs and
new gateway cities respond to foreign-born disadvantaged groups? Do they promote publicprivate partnerships with organizations that advocate for and provide human and social services
to immigrants?
Existing scholarship tends to explain immigrant-oriented public-private partnerships
through a political exchange model, where local government officials make rational decisions to
fund community organizations to achieve political goals. Local elected officials provide
immigrant organizations with resources in exchange for votes within a modern form of machine
politics in New York City (Marwell 2004, 2007). Similarly, community organizations receive
support in suburban Washington, D.C. because they solve service delivery problems for
bureaucrats and politicians (Frasure and Jones-Correa 2010). These accounts elucidate the
mechanisms within particular cases, but provide less purchase on variation between
municipalities. Why does exchange not give rise to public-private partnerships for immigrant
services everywhere? Comparative research on municipal responses to immigration suggests
that partisan ideologies and electoral politics matter (Ramakrishnan and Lewis 2005;
Ramakrishnan and Wong 2010; Wells 2004), as do feelings of threat and anti-immigrant
sentiment in local populations (Brettell and Nibbs 2011; Hopkins 2010). Not surprisingly, these
studies find that migrants who move to a liberal or progressive municipality receive a warmer
welcome than those who face anti-immigrant politicians committed to small government and
4
limited public services. The political exchange in these studies is presumed to be between
elected politicians and native-born voters, with the former enacting policies favored by the latter.
We concur that partisanship and political rationality matter, but we emphasize the
importance of government officials’ normative and cognitive orientations to help explain the
presence or absence of immigrant-oriented public-private partnerships. Taken-for-granted
notions of deservingness and legitimacy affect decisions about funding allocations. These in turn
rest on the institutional scaffolding and historical legacy of immigrant settlement, which
strengthen government officials’ awareness of and inclusive orientations towards immigrants. A
tradition of immigrant settlement also generates civic infrastructures that facilitate partnerships,
especially in larger cities with more developed bureaucratic structures, rendering immigrants a
legitimate and natural part of public service provision, grants-making, and advocacy. Taken
together, legitimacy and civic infrastructure provide immigrants in traditional gateway cities with
more civic presence and a more supportive environment for public-private partnerships
compared to those in new gateway cities or immigrant suburbs. This is the case even in
destinations characterized by progressive politics and a pro-immigrant environment, and it
occurs despite the fact that rapid demographic growth can provide new gateway cities and
immigrant suburbs with expanding fiscal resources.
In elaborating this approach, we underscore the importance of a regional lens. Regions
are key to research on economic growth, environmental issues, transportation systems, and
advocacy for social equity (Gans 2009; Pastor, Lester, and Scoggins 2009; Weir et al. 2012). We
find that geographic proximity is fundamental to understanding public-private partnerships
targeting immigrant communities, especially when there is a disjuncture between perceptions of
where immigrants live—commonly an image of ethnic neighborhoods in a traditional gateway
city—and where immigrants actually settle.
Political jurisdictions matter—community
organizations and public funding decisions are located within politically-delineated spaces—but
they must be understood within the context of metropolitan areas. Suburbs’ proximity to central
cities influences suburban officials’ assessment of immigrant communities’ local needs and
bolsters their decisions to not fund immigrant organizations; they instead presume that
immigrants can rely on the resources and services provided in other jurisdictions. We
conceptualize this dynamic as “suburban free-riding.”
Thus, while we agree that suburbs are not devoid of civic capacity (Oliver 2001), and that
some might engage in the bureaucratic incorporation of immigrants (Jones-Correa 2006, 2008),
we emphasize that suburban destinations take limited responsibility for foreign-born residents,
particularly when located close to a traditional immigrant gateway city. To a significant degree,
both elected and non-elected officials do not internalize the “new geography” of immigrant
settlement. Instead, they often view immigrant claims-making and service delivery as something
that happens in big cities, not in the places where most immigrants now live.
Our arguments draw from a multi-year study of how four different types of cities—a
continuous immigrant gateway city (San Francisco), a 21st century immigrant gateway city (San
Jose), a large suburban immigrant city (Fremont), and a smaller suburban immigrant city
(Mountain View)—support immigrant organizations. We draw on extensive fieldwork including
in-depth interviews with 142 individuals, a database of registered nonprofit organizations, and
government reports of municipal funding allocations to compare these four cities, all located in
the San Francisco Bay region. We examine how local government officials conceptualize their
responsibility to immigrant residents and we assess the financial resources they allocate through
5
the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program, a legacy of the public-private
partnership model launched by the War on Poverty.
In what follows, we first describe how public-private partnerships that serve poor and
disadvantaged populations have changed over time. We then theorize how place matters in
explaining contemporary variation in public funding for immigrant services. After outlining our
research design and data sources, we document significant inequality in resource allocation
across municipalities within the same region. To understand these findings, we elaborate the
dynamic of suburban free-riding and discuss how historical legacies of immigrant settlement
influence civic infrastructures and local officials’ constructions of immigrants as legitimate
target populations of public policy. We conclude by exploring the implications of our findings
and consider whether they might hold for other metropolitan regions.
Funding Social Services across Place and Time
Attention to place is critical to understanding public-private partnerships that target
disadvantaged groups: the poor tend to be concentrated in particular areas, community
organizations operate in specific physical locations, and funding allocations are usually made
within circumscribed political jurisdictions. For example, since 1974, when the CDBG program
consolidated seven existing federal assistance programs, local officials in disadvantaged areas
receive federal monies based on local needs within their jurisdictions. With the significant cuts
to social assistance brought on by welfare reform in 1996—the number of people receiving direct
assistance plummeted from an all-time high of 14.2 million in 1994 to 3.8 million by 2008
(Danziger 2010: 528)—poor people grew even more reliant on community organizations for
assistance, from food security to help find employment (Allard 2009). Beyond direct services,
community organizations also affect disadvantaged residents’ social ties, information flows, and
access to other resources (Small 2006, 2009). Given the significant growth of poverty in U.S.
suburbs, this has created a spatial mismatch between traditional service providers located in
central cities and the places where more and more poor people live (Allard 2009; Panchok-Berry,
Rivas, and Murphy 2011; Puentes and Warren 2006; Reckhow and Weir 2012).
Immigrants with limited means face multiple disadvantages. Data from the American
Community Survey indicate that 14.8 percent of native-born Americans lived in poverty in 2010,
compared to 18.8 percent of the foreign born and a staggering 25.1 percent of non-citizen
immigrants.2 Yet many immigrants are barred from direct cash assistance and many face
barriers accessing public institutions or nonprofit organizations set up for English-speaking
native-born citizens. Furthermore, the United States, unlike many other Western countries, does
not have a federal immigrant integration policy, but rather an uncoordinated patchwork of
programs spread across multiple levels of government that exists within an overall laissez-faire
approach to immigrant settlement (Bloemraad and de Graauw 2012; GAO 2011). Immigrants
must consequently fall back on family, co-ethnic networks, and community organizations for
social assistance and human services.
Historically, immigrant gateway cities like New York, Chicago, and Boston housed the
majority of immigrants and the organizations that served them. Urban immigrants received
social services, a civic education, and political inclusion from ethnic mutual aid societies (Beito
2000), religious institutions (Dolan 1975; Tentler 1997), local labor unions (La Luz and Fin
1998; Sterne 2001), settlement houses (Davis 1984; Trolander 1987), and political machines
(Dahl 1961; Wolfinger 1972). Consonant with ecological models of spatial assimilation (Massey
1985; Park 1926), movement to the suburbs—which correlated with greater English ability,
6
longer U.S. residence, and more socioeconomic resources (Alba et al. 1999; Iceland and Nelson
2008; Wright, Ellis, and Parks 2005)—meant a reduced need for social and human services and
diminished interest in immigrant organizations catering to linguistic and cultural differences.
Today, the image of the traditional gateway city with its institutionally complete ethnic
neighborhoods does not reflect the totality of immigrant settlement. Immigrants are moving
directly to new gateway cities and suburbs, avoiding traditional gateway cities altogether (Frey
2006; Jones-Correa 2006; Singer 2004). Already in 1980, scholars noted that the historic link
between immigration and inner-city neighborhoods was breaking down: while two-thirds of nonHispanic whites residing in metropolitan areas lived in suburbs, so did about half of Koreans,
Filipinos, Asian Indians, and Cubans—the vast majority of whom were foreign-born (Alba and
Logan 1991). In 2005, 96 percent of all foreign-born residents in the United States lived in a
metropolitan area and well over half of these immigrants resided in suburbs (Singer 2008: 7, 15),
giving rise to terms such as “ethnoburbs” and “edge gateways” (Li 1998; Logan, Alba, and
Zhang 2002; Price and Singer 2008; Zhou 2008).3
The new gateway cities and immigrant suburbs are home to large numbers of people who
face some of the same linguistic, economic, social, and cultural challenges that made urban
organizations so important to European newcomers a century ago. Contemporary immigrant
organizations provide social services (Cordero-Guzmán 2005; Marwell 2004, 2007), fight labor
law violations (Gleeson 2008; Martin 2012), express identities through cultural, religious, and
other activities (Kasinitz 1992; Reed-Danahay and Brettell 2008), advocate for public policies
that benefit immigrants (de Graauw 2008, 2012), and promote civic and political incorporation
(Bloemraad 2006; Brettell and Reed-Danahay 2012; Gleeson 2008; de Graauw 2012;
Ramakrishnan and Bloemraad 2008; Saito 1998). The bridging work of community
organizations, long a hallmark of immigrant integration, becomes even more critical given
government retrenchment, welfare state privatization, the absence of a national integration
policy, and the elusive goal of federal immigration reform.
Today’s landscape of charitable service provision is, however, very different from a
century ago. Not only is there an increasing spatial mismatch between traditional service
organizations and the new geography of immigration, but nonprofit service provision is much
more entrenched in public-private partnerships. By 1997, after more than two decades of
privatization and devolution, just over half of federal, state, and local government funds for
social services went to nonprofits (Salamon 2003). A survey of large human service nonprofits
found that government funding accounts for over 65 percent of total revenue, and 60 percent of
organizations with government funding report that these monies are their largest source of
income (Boris et al. 2010: vii). Among the limited studies reporting financial data for large
immigrant-serving nonprofits, we find similar reliance on public funding (Bloemraad 2005;
Cordero-Guzmán 2005; de Graauw 2008, 2012). Given that public-private partnerships have
become integral to the American welfare state and advocacy efforts for marginalized groups, do
municipalities provide immigrant organizations with an equitable share of public resources? If
there are differences between municipalities, what accounts for them?
Theorizing How Place Matters
Recent accounts of public-private partnerships with immigrant communities focus on a political
exchange model. Elected and non-elected local government officials make rational and strategic
decisions to fund immigrant organizations to achieve their preferred political goals. Studying
social service provision in eight community organizations in New York City, Marwell (2004,
7
2007) identifies a new form of machine politics. In a process of triadic exchange, elected city
officials provide a community organization with patronage resources via government contracts,
the community group provides patronage jobs and services to those who support particular
elected officials, and residents of the community provide votes to political incumbents. One
implication of this model is that organizations that fail to provide votes might not receive
funding. Yet only one of Marwell’s eight organizations engaged in machine politics, which
suggests that community organizations can access resources in other ways. This is important
because electoral mechanisms are problematic for immigrants, only 44 percent of whom had
acquired U.S. citizenship and the right to vote in 2010.
Frasure and Jones-Correa (2010) offer a similar model, though one that draws our
attention to the key role of non-elected rather than elected officials. Their exchange model
builds on a study of day labor centers, which mostly cater to non-citizen migrants, in new
immigrant suburbs ringing Washington, D.C. They underscore the role of local bureaucrats who
wish to provide assistance to immigrant residents, but lack fiscal resources or service abilities.
Bureaucrats thus work with community organizations that deliver services and act as linguistic
and cultural brokers. Together, community organizations and local bureaucrats get elected
officials to go along because it allows politicians to leverage limited funds by off-loading human
and social service work to nonprofit and voluntary organizations. Given that both elected and
non-elected officials influence how CDBG grants are distributed among local community groups
(Drommel 1980; Kettl 1979; Lovell 1983; Nathan et al. 1977; Rich 1993; Rimmerman 1985),
immigrant-oriented public-private partnerships involve a variety of public officials.
Yet the political exchange model leaves some important questions unanswered, including
how to explain variation in public support for immigrant services across different types of
municipalities. Studies of municipal variation have centered mainly on anti-immigrant policy
making. If we consider city decisions to fund immigrant organizations as a signal that local
officials recognize immigrants as legitimate community members who are entitled to share in the
community’s scarce resources, then conversely, proposing and passing anti-immigrant legislation
denies immigrant residents’ legitimacy and access to public resources. Considered thus,
Ramakrishnan and Wong (2010) find that political factors—especially the partisanship of local
residents—matter more than demographic or economic factors in explaining why some
municipalities propose and pass anti-immigrant ordinances while others do the opposite.
Hopkins (2010) contends that when national anti-immigrant rhetoric is politicized into feelings
of threat at the local level, demographic changes increase the probability of anti-immigrant
ordinances. Both arguments focus on the political exchange by which elected officials propose
policies in return for votes by partisan supporters.
We find it entirely plausible that public-private partnerships are more prevalent in
municipalities that are politically progressive, where immigrants make up a non-trivial
proportion of the voting population, and where public opinion is favorably disposed toward
immigrants. These elements characterize most of the cities and suburbs that ring the San
Francisco Bay, including the four we studied. Yet, as we demonstrate below, there is still
significant variation between Bay Area localities in their support for immigrant organizations
and in how they view disadvantaged immigrant communities. This suggests the need for models
that go beyond political exchange and partisan explanations.
We attempt to do so by focusing on what Ramakrishnan and Bloemraad (2008: 20) call
civic presence, especially immigrants’ visibility and legitimacy, and the dynamics that lead
public officials to identify immigrants as legitimate targets of public policy and partners with
8
local government. In focusing on legitimacy, we draw on Schneider and Ingram’s (1993) theory
of the social construction of target populations in public policy. Such constructions employ
explicit and implicit normative characterizations of a particular group that communicate who is
deserving of public attention, what government should do for the group, and the appropriate
participatory patterns for the group (Schneider and Ingram 1993: 334). Attention to rationales
and officials’ underlying assumptions elucidates such social constructions, which helps explain
why some groups are advantaged over others, independent of traditional measures of political
power or seemingly objective evaluations of need (Schneider and Sidney 2009: 105). 4 This
approach seems particularly fruitful for studying immigrant populations, which in political
discourse are simultaneously demonized as law breakers, welfare abusers, job stealers, and
national security threats (Chavez 2008; Fix 2009; Martinez, Jr. and Valenzuela, Jr. 2006; Newton
2008; Santa Ana 2002) and valorized as hard workers, future citizens, and freedom fighters
(Voss and Bloemraad 2011). We do not focus on only one group of immigrants, but rather on
their general designation as a constituency with needs that can be appropriately served by publicprivate partnerships through initiatives such as the CDBG program.
We also examine how the infrastructure of immigrant organizations feeds into social
constructions of legitimacy. Robust civic infrastructures facilitate immigrants’ ability to
establish a track-record of service and advocacy that elected and non-elected city officials can
draw upon in defining target populations and defending funding allocations (de Graauw 2008,
2012; Gleeson 2009; Ramakrishnan and Bloemraad 2008). Drawing from organizational and
social movement theories, Walker and McCarthy (2010: 318) posit that the judgments of outside
institutions and authorities, or what they term an organization’s sociopolitical legitimacy, can
facilitate resource acquisition. Civic presence, legitimacy, and institutional infrastructures help
generate propositions about how different types of localities will react to low- and moderateincome immigrant residents.
Continuous Immigrant Gateways and the Legacies of History
Building on the work of Singer and colleagues (Singer 2004; Singer, Hardwick, and Brettell
2008), we identify three types of settlement communities germane for our study. They are
distinguished by a locality’s historical experience with immigrant settlement, its size, and its
contemporary experience with immigration. First, there are the large central cities that are
continuous immigrant gateways, such as New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. These cities
have had large immigrant populations for more than a century at proportions far above the
national average. A second category is the 21st century gateways, such as Atlanta, Washington,
D.C., and San Jose. These large cities have emerged as major immigrant destinations over the
last few decades as their immigrant populations tripled or quadrupled in size (Singer 2008: 8-9).
A third type, suburban immigrant communities, are like the 21st century gateways in that their
experience with migration is recent and characterized by dramatic increases in the proportion of
immigrants. However, they differ in their absolute size, with many fewer residents, less diverse
economies, and correspondingly smaller and less complex government bureaucracies.
We posit that a sustained experience with migration facilitates the creation and reenforcement of norms that immigrants are legitimate target populations of policy and publicprivate partnerships. This does not mean that immigrants are uniformly welcomed—indeed,
residents can challenge whether public resources should go to them—but it does mean that
immigrants are a natural part of city services and decision-making. Officials and residents have
long experience with migration and even if “new” immigrants may not be welcomed as readily
9
as “older” groups, the city’s history provides discursive structures and established claims-making
frames upon which new groups can make appeals. Similarly, the legacy of continuous migration
builds up a civic infrastructure of immigrant organizations that have relations with city officials
and other civil society actors. In continuous gateways, the expansion of public-private
partnerships ushered in during the 1960s included disadvantaged immigrant populations.5 In
contrast, immigrants in 21st century gateways and suburbs must establish new institutional
infrastructures and they must gain legitimacy and civic presence in the eyes of elected and nonelected city officials.
Regional Dynamics and Suburban Free-riding
Suburbs have long been considered the bastion of middle-class white residents who seek to
escape urban social problems and redistributive tax systems (Gainsborough 2001; Jones-Correa
2006; Oliver 2001). A traditional way of viewing suburban-central city dynamics is through the
concept of parasitic suburbs. Suburban residents free-ride on the services, cultural vitality, and
economic opportunities of the racially and socioeconomically diverse central city, but they do
not pay fully for those benefits since their property taxes go to maintenance services and
suburban school systems, rather than redistribution and social services (Hill 1974; Oliver 2001).
We speculate that an analogous process of suburban free-riding can occur with immigrant
services. However, unlike the older literature which pits residents of different urban jurisdictions
against each other, immigrant free-riding places the needs of some suburban residents, often
longstanding native-born citizens, over those of immigrant newcomers. The privileging of nonimmigrant residents might be done consciously due to anti-immigrant animus, political ideology,
or for electoral gain, as noted earlier. But free-riding might also occur less intentionally in
politically progressive or moderate places. We speculate that in the latter case, immigrant groups
are simply not seen as a significant part of the civic landscape: they are not within the realm of
priorities that officials consider when funding public-private partnerships, or officials provide
rationales to elide immigrants’ needs. In new destinations, and especially suburbs, this occurs
because immigrants lack the built-up institutional structures and policy legitimacy enjoyed by
migrants in continuous gateway cities. In fact, suburban immigrants might face problems
precisely because of their proximity to traditional gateways. In such regions, suburban officials
have a hard time conceiving of their communities as destinations for immigrant populations with
unmet needs, even if demographic data make that clear.
The attraction of free-riding also rests on the reality of limited public funds and the many
demands for services faced by public officials. Suburbs have smaller budgets and smaller staffs
than their big city neighbors. The sheer number of immigrants in central cities can generate
economies of scale, allowing immigrant organizations to better advocate for and offer services to
immigrant residents (de Graauw 2008, 2012; Marwell 2004, 2007). The potential fiscal benefits
of size should not be overblown, however, since central cities increasingly confront large budget
deficits and the number of demands made on the complex bureaucracies of central cities can be a
liability, especially since immigrants can be singled out for funding cuts during periods of severe
budgetary strain (Katz 1990). But we posit that in general, central cities’ greater size generates a
larger funding pot that city officials can allocate to more groups, including immigrant
organizations, and it allows for a larger, more professional city bureaucracy with the capacity to
develop relationships with nonprofit organizations (de Graauw 2012; Ramakrishnan and Lewis
2005). This would suggest that 21st century gateways will move more quickly to extend public-
10
private partnerships to immigrants than suburbs, even though both are new to dealing with
foreign-born populations.
A Regional Research Design: Central Cities and Suburbs in the Bay Area
To investigate how different types of cities respond to immigrants’ services needs, we draw on
two comparisons. First, we compare a continuous immigrant gateway city, San Francisco, to a
21st century gateway, San Jose. Second, we compare the two central cities with two suburban
cities, Fremont and Mountain View, all located in the San Francisco Bay region of California.
Our approach resembles other comparative case studies that include new immigrant destinations
(Andersen 2010; Donato, Stainback, and Bankston III 2005; Marrow 2011; Singer, Hardwick,
and Brettell 2008), but an important novelty is that our cities lie in the same region. This allows
us to uncover how history, city size, and regional proximity matter for legitimacy, civic
infrastructure, and public-private partnerships, while controlling for the proportion of
immigrants, the ideological bent of public officials, and the regional economy. 6 Political
ideology, in particular, might complicate comparisons between different types of municipalities,
as early evidence suggests that public-private partnerships are more extensive where local
elected officials hold a liberal or progressive ideology (de Graauw 2008, 2012; Ramakrishnan
and Lewis 2005).7
[Table 1 and Figure 1 about here]
Table 1 provides a demographic overview of the four cities, while Figure 1 provides a
visual representation.8 San Francisco is a densely populated central city with 757,604 residents
concentrated on 49 square miles of land. San Jose is a sprawling city of 898,901 residents across
174 square miles. Fremont is a large suburban city, with a population of 208,455, located on the
east side of the San Francisco Bay. Mountain View is a smaller suburban city of 71,153 between
San Francisco and San Jose. Both are relatively well-off suburbs, but with pockets of significant
poverty—what Panchok-Berry, Rivas, and Murphy (2011) have labeled overshadowed suburbs.9
All four cities are Democratic strongholds: voters overwhelmingly voted for Democratic
candidates in the last two presidential elections. All four cities have at least one local elected
official who belongs to an ethnic or racial minority group other than African Americans. They
also all have hourglass economies with job growth concentrated at the top (high-paying
professional and managerial jobs) and at the bottom (low-paying services jobs). More than a
third of each city’s population is foreign-born, ranging from 36 percent in San Francisco to 43
percent in Fremont. As Figure 1 makes clear, almost all census tracts in the region house a far
higher percentage of foreign-born residents than the national average (12 percent), and in many
the proportion is three or four times greater. More than a fifth of each city’s residents speak
English “less than very well.” Compared to their incidence in the general population, immigrants
make up a larger share of the poor population in all four cities, and the children of immigrants—
those with at least one foreign-born parent—constitute a dramatically higher proportion of young
people living in disadvantaged households than children with two native-born parents. Whether
in suburbs or central cities, immigrants face social and human services needs based on
socioeconomic condition as well as immigrant-specific needs due to linguistic isolation,
precarious legal status, or other migration-specific factors.
Continuous Gateway City: San Francisco
A good deal of immigration research has centered on historic gateways such as New York,
Chicago, and Los Angeles. Yet San Francisco’s status as a continuous gateway city is
11
undisputable. Incorporated in 1850, 29 percent of San Francisco’s 507,000 residents were
foreign-born in 1920 (Gibson and Jung 2006).10 When the foreign-born population in the United
States dipped below five percent in the 1960s and 1970s, immigrants made up 19.3 percent of the
city population in 1960, climbing to 21.6 percent in 1970. By 2006, 36 percent of city residents
were born outside the United States, compared to 12.5 percent nationwide. The largest
proportion, 62 percent, hail from Asia, while 21 and 14 percent, respectively, were born in Latin
America and Europe. Almost a fifth are recent migrants who moved to the United States in the
prior six years. Immigrants in San Francisco are somewhat more likely to be naturalized
citizens—62 percent—and, perhaps surprisingly, the city’s foreign-born population makes up a
somewhat smaller proportion of all those living in poverty, at 39 percent, than in the other three
cities. However, as in the other cities, the proportion of foreign born among the city’s overall
poor population is greater than the percentage of immigrants in the general population.
Moreover, children living with one or more immigrant parents constitute an astounding 73
percent of all young people living in disadvantaged households.11
San Francisco embraces a narrative as a city of immigration, not the least because famous
neighborhoods like Chinatown, the Mission, Japantown, and North Beach are important tourist
destinations. Reminiscent of neighborhoods in New York and Chicago, San Francisco’s
immigrant groups have recognizable turfs (Pamuk 2004). The city has adopted legislation of
symbolic value to immigrant communities, including naming newer ethnic neighborhoods like
“Little Saigon,” and it has passed legislation of substantive importance, such as declaring itself a
“sanctuary city” for undocumented immigrants in 1986 and adopting language access legislation
in 2001 (de Graauw 2008, 2012). Unlike the other cities we examine, San Francisco has two
municipal agencies with specific immigrant-related mandates: the Immigrant Rights
Commission, established by ordinance in 1997, and the Office of Civic Engagement and
Immigrant Affairs, which in 2009 consolidated a handful of city offices and administrative
positions responsible for implementing immigrant integration programs. In fiscal year 2005-06,
San Francisco’s operating budget was $5.3 billion. Despite the legacy of immigration, in 2006,
only one of the eleven city legislators was Chinese American and one was Latino. 12
21st Century Gateway City: San Jose
San Jose was also incorporated in 1850, but it is a 21st century immigrant gateway. In 1920, San
Jose was a small regional center, with less than 40,000 residents. Although roughly 21 percent
of residents were foreign-born in 1920, migration was transitory and not sustained. By the
1960s, the proportion of immigrants had declined to just 8 percent (Gibson and Jung 2006). A
turning point came when San Jose’s economy, previously centered on farming, food processing,
and distribution, transformed to become the high tech capital of Silicon Valley. In 2006, San
Jose was the Bay Area’s largest city with a population of almost 900,000. Immigration fueled
part of the dramatic growth: by 2006, 39 percent of San Jose residents were immigrants, with 58
percent from Asia and 34 percent from Latin America. As in San Francisco, about a fifth are
recent migrants, and despite images of Silicon Valley wealth, over 90,000 city residents live in
poverty. Of these individuals, 42 percent are foreign-born, a greater proportion than in San
Francisco and greater than the proportion of immigrants in the general population. Seventy-one
percent of children in disadvantaged households have at least one immigrant parent.
San Jose officials usually promote pro-immigrant positions, as when city council passed a
unanimous resolution in 2007 reaffirming the police department’s policy not to arrest persons
merely due to unauthorized status (San Jose City Council 2007). The bureaucratic infrastructure
12
directed at immigrant residents is, however, less developed than in San Francisco, reflecting the
city’s 21st century gateway designation. San Jose’s Strong Neighborhood Initiative, established
in 2002, works with many immigrant organizations to foster civic engagement (City of San Jose
2009), but no city agency is specifically dedicated to immigrant affairs. In fiscal year 2005-06,
San Jose’s operating budget was $2.7 billion. Two of the ten city councilors were Latino, as was
Mayor Ron Gonzales, and one councilor was Vietnamese American.
Large Suburban City: Fremont
Fremont lies east of San Jose, at one end of the region’s major transit line. Incorporated in 1956
after five small communities amalgamated, its population stood at 44,000 in 1960, only five
percent of which was foreign-born (ABAG 2011). When Portuguese immigrants came to the
city as dairy farmers in the 1960s, they were greeted by orchards. In the 1990s, the city went
high-tech, attracting high-skilled migrants. The city experienced significant economic and
population growth, though not on the scale of neighboring San Jose. Although Fremont is the
largest suburb in the region, it has a similar feel to other Bay Area suburbs. More than one city
official emphasized, as a city staff person did during an interview, that Fremont is “largely a
bedroom community,” perceived as qualitatively different from the big cities ringing the Bay.
By 2006, Fremont was home to about 208,000 residents, 43 percent born in another
country. Fremont has the highest proportion of Asian migrants (76 percent) of the four cities in
our study while 15 percent of the foreign born have origins in Latin America. As in San Jose and
San Francisco, about a fifth of Fremont’s immigrants are recent arrivals and a bit over half (53
percent) are naturalized citizens. Fremont’s foreign born have the highest median incomes of all
four cities and the incidence of poverty in the city is relatively low. Nevertheless, of those who
do live in poverty, almost half (48 percent) are immigrants. Among children in disadvantaged
households, 72 percent have at least one immigrant parent. Thus, while the proportion and
number of people living in poverty is lower than in central cities such as San Jose and San
Francisco, among Fremont’s poor, immigrants are hit hard. They constitute a greater proportion
of the poor population than their share of the general population, and a higher proportion of poor
residents than in San Francisco or San Jose.
Fremont resembles San Jose in its symbolic support for immigrants, but limited
infrastructure for dealing with immigrant integration. Fremont lacks an agency dedicated to
immigrant affairs, and its Office of Neighborhoods—which worked extensively to promote civic
engagement among low-wage and immigrant communities—was defunded in 2005 under budget
pressures. In fiscal year 2005-06, Fremont’s operating budget was $233 million. Two city
councilors were Asian American in 2006, one with origins in India and one of Chinese
background.
Small Suburban City: Mountain View
Mountain View, also situated on a major regional transit line, lies 35 miles south of San
Francisco and 10 miles north of San Jose, across the Bay from Fremont. The city was
incorporated in 1902 with barely 600 residents. By mid-century, the population stood at 6,548,
with only 9 percent born outside the United States (ABAG 2011). As in San Jose and Fremont,
the second half of the 20th century brought demographic growth and economic transformation.
Several high-tech giants have offices in Mountain View and the city is home to a former naval
facility that now serves as a NASA research site. Population growth has been more muted than
in San Jose or Fremont—in 2006, the population was a bit over 71,000 residents—but
13
immigration is as significant. In 2006, 40 percent of Mountain View residents were foreignborn. Of these, 45 percent had origins in Asia, 33 percent in Latin America, and 17 percent in
Europe. Slightly more of these migrants are recent—30 percent entered the country since
2000—and fewer are naturalized citizens, 35 percent. The proportion of immigrants among
residents living in poverty is the highest among the four cities, at 53 percent, as is the proportion
of children living in disadvantaged families with at least one immigrant parent, 81 percent.
Mountain View is thus a suburb with a significant immigrant presence, many of whom have
urgent human and social services needs.
Like San Jose and Fremont, Mountain View lacks a municipal office dedicated to
immigrant affairs, relying instead on the leadership of its sole Latina councilwoman and the
work of the Human Relations Commission. Analogous to some of the D.C. suburbs studied by
Frasure and Jones-Correa (2010), Mountain View has allowed the establishment of a day labor
center, the only one of its kind in the South Bay. Beyond facilitating employment, the center
mobilized the Latino community for a large immigrant rights march in 2006 (Tanenbaum 2006).
In fiscal year 2005-06, Mountain View’s operating budget was $193 million.
Data and Methods
We rely on four data sources: 1) funding data on each city’s allocation of grants to community
organizations through Community Development Block Grants; 2) a database of 6,828 formally
registered nonprofit organizations in the four cities; 3) 142 in-depth interviews with elected and
appointed city officials, leaders of community organizations, and immigrant advocates; and 4)
documentary information from local governments, immigrant organizations, and local ethnic and
mainstream media.
Community Development Block Grants
Our primary outcome indicator is allocations from Community Development Block Grants
(CDBG) over three fiscal years, 2004-05, 2005-06, and 2006-07, as reported in Consolidated
Annual Performance and Evaluation Reports. The CDBG program, which dates from 1974, is
one of the longest running programs of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
(HUD). It provides federal grants on a formula basis for community development activities,
including direct service provision to low- and moderate-income persons, affordable housing, and
infrastructure improvements. The focus is on disadvantaged groups: under the Housing and
Community Development Act of 1987, governments must document that a majority of the
funding targets low- and moderate-income areas (Handley 2008). Unlike categorical grants that
must be spent for specific purposes, eligible governments have discretion over CDBG
allocations. Most funds are dispersed among community organizations, which apply through a
competitive grants process. If successful, they must spend CDBG monies on programming in
the city where funding is received.13 In the spirit of the original public-private partnership model
of the 1960s, since 1978, HUD has required jurisdictions receiving CDBG entitlements to submit
a Citizen Participation Plan to document efforts at public engagement (Handley and HowellMoroney 2010).14
The CDBG program is the largest source of discretionary federal aid awarded to local
governments and the amount of money involved is substantial (Brooks and Phillips 2010). In
2006, during our fieldwork, the federal government allocated $3.7 billion to formula grants
(Boyd 2011: 13). Among localities receiving grants, CDBG monies constituted 1.6 percent of
total spending (Brooks and Phillips 2008: 253). Contrary to the expectations of some economists
14
who predicted that cities would reduce taxes by the same amount as the federal grants received,
cities that received CDBG funds increased total expenditures by $0.77 on every dollar of grant
money (Brooks and Phillips 2008: 246). This represents real resources for disadvantaged
groups.
Receiving a CDBG grant can also have spill-over effects. Nonprofits often find that
winning one type of grant facilitates further fundraising and increases the probability of future
resources (Panchok-Berry, Rivas, and Murphy 2011). Large human and social service nonprofits
hold an average of six government contracts and grants per organization, with a median of three
distinct grants or contracts (Boris et al. 2010). Receiving public funds thus breeds a virtuous
revenue circle for many organizations, meaning that CDBG allocations provide some indication
of broader patterns of public support, or exclusion.
CDBG allocations have been used by other researchers as a measure of local public
policy responsiveness and resource allocation to racial minority populations (Hero 1990; Rich
1993), including in Browning, Marshall, and Tabb’s (1984) classic study of the San Francisco
Bay Area. We believe that this strategy can be usefully extended to comparisons of central cities
and suburban communities with large immigrant populations and concentrated pockets of
poverty. CDBG allocations are available to large and small cities—our four cities have received
CDBG funds for over 30 years—and grants may go to different types of community
organizations, including those serving immigrants. On many fronts, central cities and suburbs
are hard to compare, but because of the terms of CDBG funding, it provides a useful comparative
metric of public-private partnerships. We compare the proportion of CDBG funding received by
immigrant organizations to the share of immigrants in the city’s population.
Nonprofit Organizations and Civic Capacity
It is difficult, however, for localities to support immigrant organizations if few such
organizations exist and immigrant civic capacity is low. To receive CDBG funding,
organizations must be officially registered as 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations. We thus take
immigrant civil society into account using a National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS)
database of all 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations registered with the Internal Revenue Service
(IRS).15 Based on the address provided to the IRS, we identified 6,828 organizations with
501(c)(3) status across the four cities. We coded each organization as primarily an immigrant
organization or not. We define immigrant organizations as nonprofits whose mission is to serve
or advocate on behalf of one or more immigrant-origin communities, promote their cultural
heritage, or engage in transnational relations with the country of origin. Designation as an
immigrant organization was based on cues in the organization’s name, information in the group’s
mission statement, in-depth interviews, media statements, web descriptions, and other
documentary sources, including local directories of human service agencies.16 In total, we
counted 1,151 immigrant organizations, 17 percent of all registered nonprofits, a much smaller
share than immigrants’ 38 percent of the population in the four cities. This finding corroborates
other studies documenting immigrants’ under-representation in the nonprofit sector (Cortés
1998; Gleeson and Bloemraad 2012; Hung 2007; Ramakrishnan and Bloemraad 2008).
We focus on immigrant organizations because although some mainstream organizations
serve disadvantaged immigrants, their services often have inadequate language services or do not
provide assistance especially germane to immigrant residents, such as translation services,
culturally appropriate human services, or immigrant-related legal services. As others have
argued, and our field work shows, immigrant organizations are overwhelmingly community-
15
based organizations that specialize in serving low-income and limited-English proficient
residents (Cordero-Guzman 2005; de Graauw 2008, 2012; Martin 2012; Stepick, Stepick, and
Kretsedemas 2001; Zhou 2008). Immigrant organizations thus fill a niche in service delivery,
and many go beyond services to build immigrants’ civic skills and leadership potential and to
advocate for their rights with local policymakers (Bloemraad 2006; de Graauw 2008, 2012;
Gleeson 2008), activities in line with the community empowerment models that animated early
public-private partnerships under the War on Poverty.17
Interviews and Archival Evidence
To put the funding allocations in context, we culled through hundreds of pages of city and
federal documents to trace the CDBG allocation process and better understand interactions
between immigrant organizations and city officials. These sources included materials such as the
CDBG Consolidated Plans of each city and reports of public hearings. Strikingly, while the
CDBG program has been around for decades, and all our cities have long histories of receiving
funds, formal reporting on the grants-making process is limited and far from transparent, perhaps
because city officials wish to mitigate negative reactions among those not funded. Indeed, none
of the four cities we studied disclosed information on the organizations that applied but failed to
receive CDBG funding, despite numerous inquiries to a broad range of individuals. We were
consequently forced to rely on lists of successful grantees from public documents and requests
for information.
We also conducted 142 in-depth interviews between 2004 and 2008. These interviews
probed local officials’ sense of responsibility to immigrant communities and immigrant
organizations’ view of their relationship with city officials.18 We interviewed at least one city
council member in each city, as well as representatives of local school boards and the chairs of
various boards and commissions that work with immigrants (e.g., Human Relations
Commissions in Fremont and Mountain View and the Immigrant Rights Commission in San
Francisco). We also spoke to city staff, including those working in the Santa Clara County
Office of Human Relations, the San Jose Strong Neighborhood Initiative, and the San Francisco
Office of Civic Engagement and Immigrant Affairs. Among immigrant organizations, we
interviewed the executive director or someone knowledgeable about the history and activities of
the organization. Interviews lasted an average of one to two hours and followed a semistructured format.
Findings: City Funding and Immigrant Organizations
Immigrants increasingly live in suburbs, but these new destinations are slow to respond to their
foreign-born residents. As Table 1 showed, a greater proportion of residents in the suburban
cities of Fremont and Mountain View are foreign-born than in the central cities of San Francisco
and San Jose. Yet neither suburb awarded any CDBG funds to an immigrant organization in
2004-07, as shown in Table 2. As smaller cities, Fremont and Mountain View had less money to
allocate, making it harder to give many grants. Nevertheless, none of the CDBG monies
available to community organizations went to immigrant organizations. The lack of funding is
even more surprising when we consider that the CDBG program targets community development
activities and service provision to low- and moderate-income persons. While the two suburban
cities have, on average, a lower percentage of poor people than the two central cities, the foreignborn make up a larger proportion of the poor population in these smaller municipalities than in
San Francisco and San Jose.
16
[Table 2 about here]
In contrast, over the same three years, San Francisco gave grants to 38, 40, and 41
immigrant organizations, respectively, out of a total of 130, 151, and 124 organizations funded.
Immigrant organizations thus accounted for between 26.5 and 33.1 percent of CDBG grant
recipients and they tended to receive slightly more funding, on average, than non-immigrant
organizations. Over $4 million went to immigrant organizations in each of the years studied,
which equaled 34.2 and 33.7 percent of all grants allocated to community organizations in 200405 and 2005-06, respectively, and 40.4 percent of allocations to community organizations in
2006-07. The funding proportions are in line with the proportion of immigrants living in San
Francisco and the proportion of foreign born among the city’s poor population.
The situation in San Jose stands between that of the suburbs and San Francisco. San Jose
received a smaller overall entitlement grant than San Francisco and allocated less CDBG monies
to community organizations, funding 39 groups in 2004-05, 38 in 2005-06, and 37 in 2006-07.
Of these grant recipients, seven were immigrant organizations in each funding cycle,
representing 17.9 to 18.9 percent of all organizations funded. As in San Francisco, immigrant
organizations received, on average, a larger grant than non-immigrant organizations, and the
average monetary value of grants to immigrant organizations rose over time. In 2004-05,
immigrant nonprofits received 18.4 percent of all funding available to community organizations;
this increased in each subsequent year, to 23.5 percent and 27.5 percent, respectively. These
percentages are quite a bit lower than the proportion of immigrants in the general population, 39
percent, or the percentage of foreign born among all those categorized as poor, 42 percent, but
we see evidence that immigrant needs are somewhat visible to city officials who allocate and
administer CDBG funds.19
One possible explanation for the variation in funding could be the absence of immigrant
organizations in suburban cities. However, our analysis of officially registered 501(c)(3)
organizations indicates that, if anything, immigrant organizations make up a smaller part of the
total nonprofit universe in San Francisco, at 14.1 percent, than in the other three cities. San
Francisco—whose organizational landscape has been described as hyperpluralistic (e.g., DeLeon
1992)—stands out for the sheer number of officially registered nonprofits, at 4,203, of which 591
are predominantly immigrant-oriented. But when we consider the relative number of immigrant
nonprofits per 1,000 foreign-born residents, San Francisco (and San Jose) offer a less dense civic
infrastructure than Fremont or Mountain View. In the suburbs, immigrant organizations account
for 24.5 percent and 20.7 percent, respectively, of all officially registered nonprofits, for
approximately 4.6 and 7.8 immigrant organizations per 1,000 foreign-born residents. Lack of
funding in suburban cities cannot be explained by an absence of immigrant organizing; indeed,
immigrant organizations face greater competition in San Francisco.20
Alternatively, some might wonder whether a few mainstream umbrella organizations are
offering immigrant-targeted services in the suburbs, given that only a dozen or fewer
organizations are funded. Appendix A provides a list of all nonprofits that received any CDBG
grant in each city during the 3-year period of our study. We investigated the grant recipients in
Fremont and Mountain View and a sample of non-immigrant grant recipients in San Jose and
San Francisco to see whether the suburban non-immigrant grantees were qualitatively different
than those in the big cities.
They were not. In both central cities and suburbs, some non-immigrant organizations
also serve sub-groups of immigrants. This is hardly surprising, given the region’s demographics
and nonprofits’ public service orientation. Kidango, a nonprofit child development agency, is
17
dedicated to a multicultural curriculum, integration of an economically diverse set of families,
and inclusion of special needs children. One branch of the organization received funding from
the city of Fremont and another received support from San Jose. In Mountain View, a staff
member of the Community Services Agency, a CDBG recipient that provides emergency
assistance and social services, explained that “a community needs to be welcoming of its
immigrant population.” People of various ethnic backgrounds receive assistance and the same
staff member noted that Russian immigrants often worked as volunteers in the food pantry.
Likewise, the Ingleside Community Center in San Francisco, an organization that has long
served African Americans, more recently began outreach to the growing Chinese immigrant
population in the neighborhood. Some suburban nonprofits that receive CDBG funds provide
services to immigrant residents, but the same is true in San Francisco and San Jose, cities that
also fund immigrant-specific organizations. As we discuss further below, it is not the case that
suburbs have awarded grants to umbrella organizations with concerted immigrant outreach as
part of a distinct strategy of inclusive funding.
Furthermore, even with outreach efforts by some mainstream organizations, services for
immigrants are often inadequate. An assessment of immigrant service needs conducted in 2000
in Santa Clara County (which includes the cities of San Jose and Mountain View) found that
immigrants receive only half the services that native-born residents do while they have two to
four times greater need than native-born residents (Immigrant Relations and Integration Services
2004). A member of Mountain View’s Human Relations Commission, charged with overseeing
the CDBG allocation process, noted that among “the usual suspects that come to our meetings,”
the mainstream community activists and leaders who are “for the most part, very intelligent, very
well spoken” appear to have limited awareness of the city’s diverse population. We now turn to
investigating this dynamic more closely.
Understanding Variation: Suburban Free-riding
Lack of CDBG funding in our suburbs cannot be explained by anti-immigrant ideologies. Antiimmigrant attitudes characterize other suburban destinations (Brettell and Nibbs 2011; Chavez
2008; Perea 1996), but officials in the Bay Area usually appreciate immigrants’ economic
contributions and cultural diversity.21 During Fremont’s 50th anniversary celebration,
programming included cricket matches and Bollywood dancing (Staff 2006). One appointed
official underscored that a melting pot paradigm is “unrealistic, outdated, and to some people,
offensive,” and proudly explained that Fremont “is in fact more diverse than many larger cities.
We have people here who speak 137 different languages.” These suburbs are eager to reap the
symbolic, cultural, and economic benefits of their immigrant populations.
Yet many suburban officials do not view immigrant organizations as partners in publicprivate initiatives for ameliorating the situation of poor or modest-income residents. This occurs
because many do not see immigrants as part of their municipality’s civic infrastructure. In some
cases, immigrants and their organizations have no civic visibility at all; in other cases, suburban
officials acknowledge immigrants’ presence, but have little understanding of their specific needs.
In doing so, they often contend that immigrants’ needs are already served by other cities.
Historically, suburban residents “free-rided” on the jobs and culture of central cities, while
failing to contribute property taxes or municipal levies to deal with urban poverty. Today,
suburban cities like Mountain View and Fremont free-ride—intentionally or not—on the
immigrant services offered in larger central cities nearby. Unlike before, where suburban and
18
urban residents were pitted against each other, the new free-riding produces civic and social
inequalities between residents in the same political jurisdiction.
Some officials simply know little about the city’s demographics. Such invisibility was
epitomized in an interview with the executive director of a Fremont city agency that oversees
nonprofits offering social services. Despite her many years of experience, she recounted, “We’re
applying for a mental health grant to work with welfare recipients, and to our surprise one of the
language requirements for our area was Vietnamese. So, we must have some folks who are out
there who speak Vietnamese.” This official does not have negative feelings toward immigrants,
but she simply does not view immigrant-origin residents as a distinct part of the city’s
disadvantaged population.22 Similarly, a Human Relations Commission representative in
Mountain View referred to the South Asian community as a “small, but growing group,” despite
the fact that there are six organized Indian organizations in the city and Asian Indians make up
about six percent of the city’s population.
In other cases, officials know that immigrants live in the city but have not identified or
reached out to immigrant organizations. The suburban official who criticized a melting pot
model headed Fremont’s Human Relations Commission, the government body that receives
CDBG grant requests and makes funding recommendations to city council. While the
Commission’s evaluations are advisory, the official noted, “I don’t know if the Council’s ever
not taken the Commission’s [recommendations].” In this context, it was striking how few
immigrant organizations the official could name in the city’s civic infrastructure. Asked about
groups active in Fremont across a long list of topical areas, the official only mentioned one
Afghan organization, a Sikh Gudwara, and a local resident active in the Muslim community. 23
Similarly, in discussing the 50th anniversary event, she recounted, “We reached out to…business
associations, to the Chamber of Commerce, to all sorts of people. We reached out to the school
communities, the school districts, all the private schools, to the arts community, to all the artists,
and the symphony and to the sports teams and…to all the bunch of neighborhood groups and
PTAs and crime watch.” Immigrant organizations were notably absent from her list, despite the
102 officially registered immigrant nonprofits identified in the NCCS database. In a similar
manner, an official on Mountain View’s Human Relations Commission, which has a similar
mandate regarding CDBG allocations, could not name a local group that worked with
immigrants or refugees other than the Mountain View Day Worker Center; NCCS data indicate
that the city is home to 46 registered immigrant nonprofits.24
It is not the case that suburban immigrant groups shun partnerships with government as a
matter of ideology or prefer only private donations. Our interviews, media stories, and the
financial reports of a few prominent suburban organizations indicate that immigrant leaders
welcome funding from county, state, and federal governments when they are able to secure
grants (e.g., Benson 2007). NCCS data show that two registered immigrant organizations in
Fremont—the Afghan Coalition and India Community Center (ICC)—had revenues from
government sources (NCCS 2005). The executive director of the ICC explained that government
grants support senior programming, while other activities are funded through individual and
corporate donations as well as membership dues.
Despite their presence in suburban communities, immigrant organizations such as ICC
nevertheless repeatedly fail to appear on the rolls of CDBG recipients. This reflects the often
contradictory perspective officials have towards these organizations. One discourse suggests that
well-organized immigrant groups do not need public monies. A non-elected Fremont city
official explained, expressing admiration for ICC’s activities, “most organizations would [use a]
19
paid position, [but] they find highly-skilled volunteers to donate their time to them. I’m very
impressed with that.” Organizational prowess—usually something city officials appreciate in
allocating grants—becomes a reason not to fund groups perceived to have the wherewithal to
organizing themselves. Conversely, a lack of organization also serves as a rationale for limited
public-private partnerships. In considering the city’s Latino population, many of whom live in
low- or modest-income households, the same city official said, “We have, I’m sure, a whole
labor force of undocumented workers from Mexico and Guatemala and other places, but for
various reasons they don’t get to organize. The places where they probably are most organized
are around certain…Catholic churches.” Seen to have limited civic infrastructure, residents’
needs are left to religious institutions. And even when a highly disadvantaged group organizes,
there is no guarantee of CDBG funding. The Mountain View Day Worker Center, which serves
an overwhelmingly Latino immigrant clientele and is one of the few formal day labor centers in
Silicon Valley, received no CDBG support from the city of Mountain View from 2004 to 2007.
We suggest that this dynamic arises because the social construction of target populations
places immigrants outside the circle of legitimate recipients of public grants. This is done in a
variety of ways. A few suburban officials and civic leaders hinted that immigrants might not be
fully local residents since they retain ties to their countries of origin. As one civic leader put it,
reflecting on the suburb’s immigrant population, “a lot of the sort of people who [have] come to
this country recently—probably because of the internet and business and world economy—
they’re here, but one foot here and one foot still in the country that they came from.”
Another narrative suggests that immigrant suburbanites are uniformly wealthy. One
Fremont city councilor explained, “We’re not dealing with the same kind of immigrant issues
that most communities deal with in terms of the low-skilled workers and all of the debate that
you hear now about the immigrant community. We’ve got one of the wealthiest immigrant
populations.” Silicon Valley is certainly home to high-skilled, well-off immigrants, but the
parallel low-wage immigrant population often goes unnoticed. Asked specifically about the
Latino population, a group with significant pockets of poverty, the same official said there was
no organized presence in his city, but there seemed to be some activities in other cities that
Fremont’s Latinos could access.
A third discourse views immigrant concerns as particularly insular. An elected official in
Fremont, predicating his remarks with, “I don’t mean it [as] derogatory,” then went on to explain
that various organizations in the low-income Afghan community were centered on “self-help
issues” and “improving their own lot…mostly it’s for the welfare of their people. Help get them
educated; help, you know, [with] citizenship.” The label “their people” and the claim of
insularity stood in contrast to the official’s inclusive language around another group of residents:
“We have a large number of active seniors,” he commented, especially underscoring those
associated with the city-funded Senior Center. Particular social constructions of immigrant
communities—as excessively transnational, rich, small, or insular—help drive suburban freeriding, even in immigrant destinations such as Fremont, which is home to one of the largest
Afghan communities in the United States.
Importantly, such arguments are articulated in a regional context that allows suburban
officials to place immigrant residents’ needs outside the suburb’s jurisdiction. An elected
official in Mountain View acknowledged, “it’s certainly very visible, that you have ethnic
segments of the community.” However, the official also explained that given limited resources
and a small staff, the city calls on volunteers to deal with the needs of ethnic communities.
According to a number of suburban officials, it is impractical for small cities to pay for
20
immigrant services given the availability of such services and immigrant organizations in
neighboring jurisdictions. A Fremont city councilor explained, discussing what he viewed as the
small number of Vietnamese in his city, “Obviously, there are Vietnamese people [here], but my
guess is that they probably go to San Jose for their, you know, ethnic involvements.” Such
arguments carry some face validity. The Vietnamese-origin population in Fremont is 5,600,
compared to almost 90,000 Vietnamese-origin residents in San Jose, and Fremont’s operating
budget is a fraction of its big city neighbor. Yet a non-trivial segment of the city’s most
disadvantaged residents speak Vietnamese. They are expected to rely on San Jose’s nonprofit
infrastructure, a 30-minute drive away or an hour on public transportation.25
Strikingly, appeals to economies of scale and references to the availability of services in
other jurisdictions are not used when it comes to senior services or programs for handicapped
residents, two populations that received a substantial proportion of Fremont’s CDBG monies in
the period studied. We do not want to imply that seniors and the handicapped are not deserving
of public grants, but rather that public officials do not reflect on why Fremont’s Senior Center,
serving 21,000 residents over 65, received four grants totaling almost $270,000, but no Latino
organization received CDBG support, despite a population of over 32,000. Asked explicitly
about the city’s Latino community, an elected Fremont official constructed a narrative to
minimize the group’s size by making explicit reference to other cities: “the percentage of Latinos
in Fremont are small compared to other communities.” Yet Fremont’s Latino population
represents 15 percent of all city residents—a proportion on par with San Francisco. Such appeals
to economies of scale—there are bigger immigrant populations in other cities with larger
budgets, as well as a longer history of immigrant support services—are used by suburban
officials to rationalize the absence of funding in their own municipality. Immigrant services
become the purview of the suburbs’ larger and presumably richer municipal siblings.
We label this phenomenon suburban free-riding. It results from suburban decisionmakers’ taken-for-granted ideas about suburban life—often rooted in iconic images more
appropriate to the 1950s and 1960s—and from assumptions about the needs of immigrants
arrived at without dialogue with immigrant organizations.26 A Fremont city councilor of
immigrant origins, for example, described a small group of residents very active in city affairs
who have “lived here forever, who [see] Fremont as a rural community and not even as a
suburban community.” These individuals still imagine a place with fields and a time when the
city “was fairly uniform and unified.” In this context, immigration and minority issues are big
city problems, not those of a bedroom community. We speculate that especially in regions with
longstanding immigrant gateways such as San Francisco, and even 21st century gateways like
San Jose, the presence of central cities reinforces the notion that immigrant services are a big city
jurisdiction.27
The phenomenon of suburban free-riding is apparent to the staff of immigrant
organizations in San Jose and San Francisco. A staff member of a prominent Vietnamese
organization in San Jose, which receives CDBG money, explained that many clients and
volunteers come from outside San Jose, including Fremont. Similarly, a staff member with La
Raza Centro Legal, a CDBG grantee organization founded to serve Hispanic immigrants in San
Francisco’s Mission district, commented, “We’ve been in the community since 1973 and we’ve
built a reputation with the high quality legal services we provide…I’d say that just under 50
percent of our clientele comes from San Francisco, but a majority of our clientele comes from
San Mateo County…and as far as San Jose in the south.” A staff member with the Vietnamese
Community Center of San Francisco, also a recipient of CDBG funds, told us that her
21
organization traditionally served residents in the low-income Tenderloin district, but now also
helps Vietnamese-speaking clients from south of San Francisco and the East Bay. The
widespread demand for services highlights the success and regional reputation of these
organizations, but it also reflects the absence of comparable services in the suburbs.
Suburban governments’ lack of partnership with immigrant organizations flies in the face
of suburban officials’ recognition of the value of working with nonprofits. A Mountain View
elected official praised the partnership that the city had formed with a former CDBG-funded
nonprofit dedicated to music and arts: “They have a significant impact on the community
because they also have programs within the schools that would not be available because of the
budget constraints on the schools. They actually create programs…And the city of course gets a
benefit out of that.” Immigrant concerns, in comparison, were often relegated to special
municipal commissions set up to promote tolerance in Fremont and Mountain View. Officials
also expected that a few prominent minority leaders, such as a city council’s one or two
immigrant-origin members, would serve as liaisons to the city’s immigrant communities.
The situation is different in the region’s big cities. San Francisco and San Jose also face
enormous budget challenges, but local officials view partnerships with immigrant organizations
as a productive and efficient way to address the needs of city residents. As a high-level
administrator in San Francisco commented:
In a place as diverse as San Francisco…where there is a significant immigrant and
refugee population, we can’t just idly stand by and ignore these people...Our
efforts at reaching out to immigrants and refugees in this city, I think, would be a
lot less effective without the various immigrant groups that we fund. We simply
wouldn’t be able to reach into some pockets of the immigrant community. These
organizations—and they’ll also tell you that—they have a better ability to connect
and deliver the kinds of services that immigrants need.
Officials in both central cities, but especially in San Francisco, consistently talked about the
advantages of partnerships with immigrant organizations, even though the foreign born make up
a smaller percentage of their overall city and poor populations than in the suburbs. San Jose and
San Francisco cannot free-ride on the resources of others and invest in local immigrant
organizations, though they vary in the extent to which they do so.
Understanding Variation: A Continuous and 21st Century Immigrant Gateway
San Jose and San Francisco differ from the suburbs and each other in the proportion of CDBG
funding they allocate to immigrant organizations. Many more immigrant organizations in San
Francisco enjoyed, collectively, a larger share of CDBG funding. These public-private
partnerships occur even though immigrant organizations face resource competition from a much
denser civil society: San Francisco counts over five 501(c)(3) organizations per 1,000 residents,
almost double the concentration of nonprofits in Mountain View, and more than two times the
concentration in San Jose and Fremont. A key explanation, we argue, lies in San Francisco’s
history of immigration. Historical legacies have produced a broad and sophisticated immigrant
civic infrastructure and created a normative orientation among elected and non-elected city
officials that immigrants can and should make claims on city resources.
San Francisco’s history as a continuous immigrant gateway has produced a diverse set of
immigrant organizations with expertise, networks, and a strong sense that they are legitimate
stakeholders in the city. Considering all formally registered nonprofit organizations in the four
cities, roughly 40-45 percent acquired 501(c)(3) status before 1990, as shown in Table 2.28
22
Focusing only on immigrant organizations in San Francisco, 50 percent are longstanding
nonprofits. Roughly a dozen date back to the late 19th century, when the city experienced
significant migration from China, Italy, Ireland, the Philippines, and Russia. Immigrant
nonprofits in the other three cities are, on average, more recently registered. Even in San Jose,
home to over 350,000 immigrants, only 30 percent of immigrant organizations were formal
501(c)(3) organizations before 1990, a much “younger” organizational profile.
An older stock of immigrant organizations in San Francisco also helps to incubate a new
generation of immigrant organizations as the immigrant population changes. A staff member
with the International Institute of San Francisco (IISF) explained:
We were founded in 1918 to help early immigrants to this country, many of them
from Europe. And we still do that type of service work today, but our work also
lives on through a number of other organizations…We founded the Chinese
Newcomers Service Center in 1969. And what is now the Southeast Asian
Community Center, we started that in 1976, and then we also had a hand in
getting seed funding to start the Filipino Newcomer Service Center, this was also
in the 1970s…We created these spin offs because there was a demand for services
for specific groups of immigrants and refugees, and these services at the time IISF
couldn’t provide or simply couldn’t provide fast enough.
New organizations then can build on the know-how and reputation of established groups.
Would-be leaders of new immigrant organizations, who are sometimes staff or volunteers
from existing groups, can also access an array of resources for leadership development and grant
writing in San Francisco. A staff member with the Zellerbach Family Foundation, a grantmaking institution in San Francisco noted:
An organization called CompassPoint provides workshops to teach nonprofit staff
leadership and management skills and also strategies to increase the impact of
their advocacy…Then there’s Partnership for Immigrant Leadership and Action,
which is…a nonprofit that specifically provides technical assistance to other
nonprofits in low-income immigrant communities.
Thus, successive generations of immigrant organizations and an identifiable infrastructure of
support groups generate knowledge, expertise, and confidence to engage local government.
Civic infrastructure is not enough, however. A continuous history of immigration also
creates a normative and cognitive environment where the provision of immigrant services is an
accepted city practice and where immigrant organizations are visible, legitimate partners. Many
of the CDBG-funded immigrant organizations that we visited in San Francisco prominently
displayed awards of appreciation from the Board of Supervisors and the Mayor’s Office, which
shows on a more symbolic level that immigrant organizations are incorporated into the city’s
sociopolitical fabric. The city also recognizes that disadvantaged populations can evolve as
migration flows change. San Francisco’s 2005-10 Consolidated Plan, which structures CDBG
priorities, explicitly states that community development must address “the unanticipated needs of
existing and emerging populations.”29 In contrast, suburban officials often appear reluctant to
challenge longstanding grant-making patterns. As one suburban official who participated in
awarding grants put it, “You see [immigrants] in the grant process. We had the Afghan women
come to us and request money…[But] we only get a certain amount [of money]…you’re going to
take money from somewhere else to give it to them.” In San Francisco, city officials
acknowledge such trade-offs, but view immigrant organizations as legitimate grantees.
23
From the viewpoint of city officials, public-private partnerships leverage the linguistic
skills and service work of immigrant organizations. One high-level San Francisco administrator
said, “I think literally 50 percent of our city’s delivery of services is accomplished through
nonprofits, particularly in the health field, social services, and services for the aging population.
Additionally, nonprofits play a key role in identifying problems for us to solve…[Immigrant
organizations] should be there, because essentially they represent people who have yet to gain
access to government.”30 City officials also partner with immigrant organizations because they
offer channels of communication to city residents. As one city supervisor put it, speaking
approvingly of the advocacy and service efforts of immigrant organizations:
Nonprofits briefed me and my staff…and we recognized some startling facts, that
about a quarter of San Franciscans are less than proficient in English…The entire
city is at potential risk if the government cannot communicate with the citizenry
in times of emergency, certainly, but on an on-going basis, we have services.
That is why government exists, to provide services, and if we can’t communicate
with a quarter to a half of our citizenry, then what are we doing?
In San Francisco, both elected and non-elected city officials lauded the leveraging that Frasure
and Jones-Correa (2010) also identified in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.
Leveraging is thus possible in large cities and smaller suburbs, but a focus on the social
construction of target populations helps explain when the relevant city officials see such publicprivate partnerships as advisable. This also helps explain differences in funding between San
Francisco and San Jose. Interviews with elected and appointed officials in San Jose hint at a
wider gulf between the city and immigrant civil society. Some officials, like one Housing
Commissioner, underscore the city’s diversity—“there is no real majority here anymore”—and
its experience with immigration to claim that immigrants find a more welcoming environment in
San Jose than in many other American cities. But this sentiment was less widespread than in San
Francisco. As a San Jose city councilor explained in discussing how city government manages
immigrants’ issues, “We work with a representative from the consulates.” Similar to some
suburban officials, this councilor viewed relations with immigrant communities as working
through liaisons rather than direct engagement in public-private partnerships involving CDBG or
other government grants.
The emphasis on consulates also underscored the foreign
background—and perhaps less legitimate claims—of these residents.
In San Jose, a few city councilors had a hard time naming a single immigrant or ethnic
organization in the city, similar to some of the suburban officials. One San Jose councilor
acknowledged that “there are [immigrant] groups who interface with the City Council to try to
settle issues,” but then explained, “I don’t know all the names of these organizations. But there
are organizations in the city that help people.” In fact, we identify 412 immigrant organizations
among the officially registered nonprofits in San Jose. The councilor’s lack of knowledge
probably helps explain why, of about 38 organizations funded annually through CDBG monies
from 2004 to 2007, only 7 were immigrant organizations. This included only one Latino
organization, in a city where 31 percent of the population is Latino. San Francisco, where
Latinos make up 14 percent of the population, funded more Latino organizations, groups that city
officials readily identified by name.
As a 21st century gateway city, immigrant organizations in San Jose have not yet
achieved the experience, legitimacy, and authoritative voice to challenge such exclusions. They
have, on average, shorter institutional histories since immigrants formed a much smaller
proportion of the population from the 1950s to the 1980s. The leader of a pan-Asian
24
organization in San Jose contrasted his group’s growing pains with allied, and more established,
organizations in San Francisco, “It was great that we have operated for three years, but we did
run across some issues within the organization that would have helped tremendously if we would
have had some sort of document to go back to.” Shorter institutional histories affect leaders’
confidence in pressuring city officials and hinder their ability to advocate for funding.
It is also harder for immigrant leaders to find adequate resources to set up and run new
organizations. For example, when San Jose’s Parks and Recreation Department mandated
501(c)(3) status for all groups receiving city support, including renting city properties, a young
second-generation Latina who heads an Aztec dance troupe had difficulties buying insurance and
learning how to file the paperwork needed to register as a nonprofit. San Jose is home to
leadership development organizations, such as the San Jose Leadership Council, which provides
technical assistance and training for individuals willing to pay its $2,195 tuition bill. Given,
however, its substantial fee, its business orientation, and limited outreach to immigrants, the
Leadership Council does not play a role analogous to CompassPoint and Partnership for
Immigrant Leadership and Action in San Francisco.
Sheer city size—including a larger budget and more developed bureaucracy—does,
however, generate some openings for immigrant populations, openings that are more limited in
the suburbs. In San Jose, the Strong Neighborhood Initiative directed redevelopment funding
and staff outreach to “blighted” areas. Some of these areas were immigrant neighborhoods with
an under-developed civic infrastructure. As a city employee explained, “[The] intent [was] to
reach out to everybody within the area to try to bring them to these meetings, to begin a
conversation…We would actually do grassroots organizing to get people to come out…going
door-to-door, talking to people, asking them what their issues were and then try to get them to
come out to these community-wide meetings.” A number of staff members were multi-lingual,
and in some cases they helped neighborhoods with CDBG grant applications. According to one
staff person, these efforts increased civic engagement by bringing more people into municipal
discussions and fostering networks between participants. It also increased residents’ sense of
legitimacy, “They feel far more entitled, far more inclined to say, ‘Hey, this is an issue our [City]
Council should have had.’” In line with the arguments of Ramakrishnan and Lewis (2005), San
Jose’s larger bureaucratic structure provides more information and practical help for interacting
with the city than in the suburbs, which is especially important in cultivating new groups. This
facilitates public-private partnerships with immigrant communities and generates a greater sense
of civic inclusion on both sides.
Concluding Thoughts and Future Extensions
Whether targeting native-born residents or immigrants, the work done by community
organizations is frequently conceived of as taking place in the urban core of large cities. Yet
immigration, gentrification, and new patterns of job growth have rendered suburban
communities much more diverse—in socioeconomic, linguistic, racial, and cultural terms—than
ever before, and these dynamics have also contributed to the rapid growth of 21 st century
gateway cities and suburban immigrant destinations. Are governments in these new destinations
building partnerships with immigrant residents and their organizations, especially with those of
low or modest income?
Based on our comparison of CDBG allocations in four Bay Area cities, we conclude that
immigrant organizations are incorporated in the traditional immigrant gateway of San Francisco,
they are partially seen, but inadequately served in San Jose, a 21st century gateway city, and they
25
are invisible or ignored in the new suburban destinations of Fremont and Mountain View. In San
Francisco, immigrant organizations receive a share of public resources on par with their
proportion in the city population and among poor residents; in San Jose, officials allocate some
resources to immigrant organizations, but much less than immigrants’ prevalence in the poor
population. Most striking, in the large and smaller suburban cities of Fremont and Mountain
View, no immigrant organization garnered a single dollar in CDBG funding over the 3-year
period we studied, even though these suburbs are home to a higher proportion of immigrant
residents than the big cities and immigrants facing linguistic, economic, and legal hardships form
a larger proportion of their poor population—the very group CDBG funds target. For welfare
state researchers, these findings parallel those of Allard, when he concluded, “the amount of
assistance received in a social service-based system is determined by the neighborhood in which
one lives, not one’s level of need” (2009: 36). For scholars of immigration, funding disparities
support the contention that researchers must distinguish between different types of immigrantreceiving jurisdictions when studying the “new geography” of immigrant settlement (Frey 2006;
Jones-Correa 2006; Singer 2004; Singer, Hardwick, and Brettell 2008).
Beyond documenting inter-city variation, we develop an argument for what accounts for
these differences. We contend that San Francisco’s continuous exposure to migration over the
20th century, as compared to San Jose’s more recent experiences, has produced a vibrant civic
infrastructure of immigrant organizations that have the experience, networks, and expectation
that they should be partners with city officials. Their expectations are, for the most part, shared
by government officials, who draw on a narrative of the city as an immigrant destination and a
history of public-private partnerships to justify including immigrants in social policy.
Our research also shows that city officials in the immigrant suburbs free-ride on the
funding that neighboring central cities disperse to immigrant organizations and the services those
groups deliver, even though CDBG monies are supposed to be dedicated to the residents of a
specific city, not the region. Suburban officials in a politically progressive region such as the
San Francisco Bay Area celebrate diversity among their residents. But when it comes to publicprivate partnerships, they employ a variety of narrative strategies and rationales to place
immigrants outside their socially constructed notions of target populations. In some cases,
immigrants appear completely invisible, while in many others they are too transnational, too rich,
or too organized for public support or, conversely, they are too insular, too small, or too
unorganized. Suburban officials also explain the lack of outreach and support as stemming from
capacity constraints—suburbs have less money, less staff, and less experience dealing with these
issues—but we suggest that suburban officials also use the established services offered by central
city immigrant organizations to perpetuate the lack of investment in their own jurisdictions.
Although geographers, sociologists, and students of urban politics increasingly highlight the rise
of “ethnoburbs” and “edge gateways” as a critical frontier for immigrant integration (Li 1998;
Logan, Alba, and Zhang 2002; Price and Singer 2008; Zhou 2008), our research shows that
elected and non-elected government officials in immigrant suburbs have not yet come to terms
with their cities’ changing demography, even if their political ideology welcomes diversity.
Some might wonder whether our results merely reflect the dynamics of political
exchange discussed by Marwell (2004, 2007). After all, 62 percent of San Francisco’s foreignborn residents are U.S. citizens, while the proportion is only 35 percent in Mountain View; San
Jose and Fremont fall in-between. We cannot rule out a role for electoral politics, especially
when a lack of voting rights could make it harder for immigrants to challenge inertia in
municipal services and grants-making. But the evidence suggests any such link is far from
26
direct. San Francisco’s legislative body, the Board of Supervisors, was dominated by white,
native-born officials in 2006. So it is not the case that city government reached out to immigrant
organizations thanks to a diverse local legislature or patronage-style ethnic politics.
Furthermore, the proportion of naturalized immigrants who were living in poverty in San
Francisco in 2006, nine percent, was lower than the proportion of poor native-born residents (11
percent) and far below the poverty rate among non-citizen migrants (18 percent). Those most in
need of human and social services are the ones shut out of electoral politics.
Instead, our field research suggests that a key obstacle outside San Francisco lies in
immigrants not being seen as legitimate interlocutors and civic partners. The social construction
of immigrant residents and of the municipality—for example, as a bedroom community without
needy immigrants—rationalizes the lack of public-private partnerships. The growing research on
new immigrant destinations must therefore move beyond simple juxtapositions between
progressive and anti-immigrant localities. Instead, scholars need to consider how characteristics
such as size, immigrant history, and location in a metropolitan region affect responses to
immigration, paying attention to civic presence, the social construction of legitimacy—of people
and organizations—and civic infrastructures. Adopting a regional approach, as we do here,
illuminates how suburbs free-ride on central cities’ resources. The fact that such free-riding
occurs in the Bay Area—an unusually progressive region with relatively generous public
spending on services, an active civil society, and an extremely high proportion of immigrant
residents—raises the possibility that free-riding might be widespread. Most regions would have
conditions much less conducive for public-private partnerships around immigrant services.
Future studies need to assess how broadly our findings hold in areas with different
immigration histories and regional dynamics. Scholarship in this area is just beginning, but there
is evidence that the empirical story we tell holds elsewhere, although research has focused more
on establishing spatial mismatch than explaining it. In a study of community organizations
serving immigrant women, Truelove (2000: 141) found that while only 24 percent of recent
immigrants and 26 percent of established immigrants in metropolitan Toronto lived in the central
city, fully 53 percent of all immigrant social service providers were located in the city of
Toronto, a traditional gateway in Canada. In metropolitan Chicago, CDBG beneficiary
populations varied widely between the central city and outlying suburbs. The Chicago suburbs,
like Fremont and Mountain View, tended to allocate grants to organized groups of the elderly,
disabled, and mentally handicapped rather than to a broad pool of low- to moderate-income
residents (Rich 1993: 320-321). In another study, over half of municipal leaders surveyed across
Chicago’s suburbs felt that their municipality did not need assistance in developing strategies to
serve immigrant residents and indicated no awareness of immigrant populations living in their
municipality, even though the foreign-born population averages 19 percent across the region’s
suburbs (Metropolitan Mayors Caucus 2012). Suburban free-riding around traditional gateway
cities is likely a widespread phenomenon, as also hinted at by research conducted in New York
(Cordero-Guzmán 2005; Marwell 2004, 2007) and Los Angeles (Valenzuela 2006).
Dynamics might vary in regions where the dominant central city is not a traditional
immigrant gateway, such as Washington, D.C. or Atlanta.31 In such places, suburban elected and
non-elected officials might take greater leadership in exchanging public funding or technical
support for privately organized service provision by immigrant organizations, as in the case of
day labor centers (Fine 2006; Frasure and Jones-Correa 2010). Without the narrative and
established immigrant civic infrastructure of a traditional immigrant gateway, immigrant
residents might face lower hurdles to being seen as legitimate targets of social policy. One study
27
of nonprofits in the D.C. area provides mixed evidence for this proposition. It found that over
time, more immigrant organizations were locating in the suburbs; by 2007, of 533 immigrant
organizations in the region, 41 percent were located in Maryland, a proportion on par with the 43
percent of the Latino, Asian/Pacific Islander, and African immigrant residents. Conversely,
however, 24 percent of immigrant organizations—usually those with more financial resources—
were located in Washington, D.C., but only 6 percent of the region’s immigrants lived within the
city limits (de Leon et al. 2009: 5). Organizational leaders also recounted some stories similar to
those we document, such as service providers parrying local officials’ belief that all Asian
migrants are rich and without service needs.
The case of metropolitan D.C. also raises the issue of change over time. We were only
able to collect three years of CDBG data given the substantial hurdles in securing and verifying
grant information, and the desire to match the financial data to our field research. Since then,
Fremont and Mountain View have taken small steps to fund immigrant organizations. Fremont
finally awarded the Afghan Coalition, founded in 1996, a CDBG grant in 2010-11, but it was the
only immigrant organization to receive monies. Similarly, the Mountain View Day Worker
Center, also founded in 1996, received a $10,000 CDBG grant in 2007-08 and 2008-09, the only
immigrant organization awarded a grant (City of Mountain View 2009: 21). This bolsters the
argument that one of the comparative advantages that immigrants in San Francisco have is the
age and experience of the city’s immigrant organizations. Combined with a political climate that
is not particularly hostile to immigrant newcomers, this suggests that with time, funding patterns
and conceptions of immigrant organizations as deserving partners might change in Bay Area
suburbs. Given, however, that demographic realities have been changing much more quickly,
this leaves tens of thousands of contemporary migrants with limited organizational sources of
assistance, a situation likely replicated across the United States due to new geographies of
immigration and poverty.
28
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Endnotes
1
Low-wage immigration is only one contributor to growing suburban poverty. Gentrification in
city centers, which is pricing out poor residents, also plays a role, as does the movement of
employment opportunities outside the traditional city core.
2
The proportion refers to those below 100 percent of the federal poverty level. Calculations by
the authors from the U.S. Census FactFinder tool.
3
Suburbs can be defined in various ways, including by a population threshold or based on
residents’ average commute time to work. Our conception rests on a political delineation of
space which, as Massey and Denton (1988) note, divides metropolitan areas into mutually
exclusive units of local government that affect things such as property taxes and education
systems. As we elaborate below, our designation of suburbs also reflects local residents’
distinctions between the Bay Area’s big cities and what they see as qualitatively different
bedroom communities, even if these communities are relatively large.
4
Schneider and colleagues are particularly interested in policy design and policy content. We
are primarily interested in how policy is applied in a context of changing demographics, which
they underscore is an important area for future research.
5
For example, community organizations serving Hispanic immigrants in San Francisco
(Rodriguez 2011: 91) and Portuguese immigrants in the Boston area (Bloemraad 2006: 187)
benefited from Model Cities funding in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
6
A city’s history of refugee resettlement might also be important (Andersen 2010; Bloemraad
2006; Singer, Hardwick, and Brettell 2008), but this often overlaps with a history of migration.
7
Scholars of urban politics also often contrast the political systems of large cities to reform-style
suburban governments, which frequently include a council-manager form of government, atlarge representative districts, and nonpartisan elections. However, the cities of Fremont and
Mountain View are not “pure” reform cities: Fremont has both an elected mayor and appointed
city manager, while in Mountain View the mayor and city manager are appointed. The central
cities of San Francisco and San Jose have independently elected mayors, but also reform-style
elements: San Jose has an appointed city manager and San Francisco has an appointed city
administrator. Local elections in San Francisco and San Jose are nonpartisan, like in the suburbs,
as required by California electoral law. San Francisco has experimented with both at-large and
district elections and re-instituted district elections in 2000. San Jose has had district elections
since 1978. Mountain View and Fremont both have city councils elected at-large. There is no
stark and simple difference in these cities’ political systems.
8
Population statistics reported in Table 1 and attributed in the text to 2006 are from three-year
averages (2005-07) of the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (U.S. Census Bureau
2009). We use these data to match the time period of our CDBG funding data and field research.
The map in Figure 1 is based on 2005-09 ACS data since tract-level data are only available in
five-year estimates.
9
Our study design does not permit further distinctions between suburbs, by overall poverty level
or change in poverty (Allard 2009) or by the particular political, social, and institutional
differences in suburban poverty (Panchok-Berry, Rivas, and Murphy 2011). Studying such intersuburban variation is an important next step in this field.
37
10
In 1920, the foreign born made up a much smaller share, 13 percent, of the national
population.
11
The poverty statistics are for individuals living under 100 percent of the federal poverty
threshold. This metric references a family’s total income for the previous year to thresholds
based on an adequate food plan for different sized families, without adjustment for local cost of
living. The data on children in disadvantaged households are for those living under 200 percent
of this threshold. Given the very high cost of living in the Bay Area, people in this situation are
living in very disadvantaged conditions.
12
A third local legislator was African American; non-Hispanic whites held almost three-quarters
of legislative seats.
13
The CDBG allocations we study went to the cities of San Jose, Fremont, and Mountain View,
and the City and County of San Francisco. CDBG grant allocations are comparable across the
four cities despite San Francisco’s consolidated city/county structure since rules from the
Department of Housing and Urban Development require that county funds only go to community
organizations that serve populations in unincorporated areas of the county. Because nonprofits
serve a wide range of clients, recipients of county grants often also receive city grants. Our
examination of the CDBG grantee lists over 2004-07 for Alameda and Santa Clara counties,
where the other three cities are located, show that organizations receiving county funds often
received city funds as well.
14
There is one CDBG funding cycle per year and the allocation process is similar across cities.
HUD requires cities to develop five-year Consolidated Plans, which identify the community
development goals against which CDBG applications are evaluated. HUD also requires cities to
provide for public participation throughout the strategic planning and allocation processes.
Cities typically issue Requests for Proposals in November, with applications due in January of
the following year. City commissions review applications, formulate funding recommendations,
and invite public feedback. For the cities we studied, these are the Citizen’s Committee on
Community Development in San Francisco, the Neighborhood Services and Education
Committee in San Jose, the Senior Citizens and Human Relations Commissions in Fremont, and
the Human Relations Commission in Mountain View. Administrative agency staff administer
the CDBG funds. These are the Mayor’s Office of Community Development (now the
Community Development Division within the Mayor’s Office of Housing) in San Francisco, the
Department of Housing in San Jose, the Human Services Department in Fremont, and the
Community Development Department in Mountain View. City legislators review the funding
recommendations, convene more public hearings where applicants can testify, and vote to
finalize allocations by April or May. CDBG funds are made available to grantee organizations
for the next fiscal year starting July 1.
15
We excluded private foundations, as these groups are often private tax shelters treated as
distinct financial entities in analyses by nonprofit scholars (e.g., Boris and Steuerle 2006).
16
Other studies of immigrant or minority nonprofits have used different identification criteria,
including the origins of directors and board members (Hung 2007; De Vita, Roeger, and
Niedzwiecki 2009) or data on clients’ origins (Cordero-Guzmán 2005; de Graauw 2008, 2012;
Martin 2012). To cast as broad a net as possible, we focus on overall mission and activities and
38
use a wide array of sources to allocate organizations. For further details on methodology, see
Gleeson and Bloemraad (2012).
17
Due to their nonprofit status, immigrant organizations are banned from partisan electioneering,
but they can advocate for members and clients and engage in a limited amount of lobbying
(Berry with Arons 2005; de Graauw 2008).
18
We completed 46 interviews in San Francisco, 65 in San Jose, 16 in Fremont, and 15 in
Mountain View.
19
CDBG data for San Jose suggest that the city’s attention to human and social services for
immigrants might be growing over time, if not in the number of organizations funded, then in the
money allocated. The trend, however, is based on the city’s decision to give a few immigrant
organizations significant resources for infrastructure investments, including a building purchase
to expand services to the Korean American community and more office space for a Japanese
American group. A Portuguese American group received a sizeable grant to renovate a kitchen
used in nutritional programs.
20
Indeed, the city of San Francisco explicitly acknowledges this problem. The city’s 2005-10
Consolidated Plan, which lays out priorities for CDBG grants, notes, “The large number of nonprofit organizations serving low-income communities in San Francisco is both an asset and a
limitation. With a long history of serving the community, the sheer number of non-profits leads
to increased competition for limited resources. Conversely, the benefits of a rich variety of
social service organizations often translates to more community-based and culturally competent
services for low-income residents” (CCSF 2006: 111).
21
While city officials were largely multicultural in orientation, there are pockets of antiimmigrant sentiment among suburban residents, just like in big cities. For example, a Fremont
official recounted that when a Chinese American city councilor, born in the United States,
proposed celebrating the national origins of city employees during the Fourth of July parade, “he
got nasty e-mails and letters, you know, telling him to go back to the country he came from.”
Similarly, though Mountain View compiles a “diversity calendar” and showed significant
support for May 1 immigrant rights marches, a representative of the Human Relations
Commission spoke about antagonism among residents towards new immigrant arrivals,
including antagonism by some of the city’s established Mexican American residents.
22
In fact, the 2005-07 ACS estimated 5,600 residents of Vietnamese origin living in the city.
23
The interview schedule asked respondents to name organizations in the city involved in the
following areas: arts and music, education, health, senior citizen issues, labor unions, advocacy
groups, ethnic and cultural groups, naturalization, citizenship and voting, immigrant and refugee
settlement, civic groups or clubs, neighborhood associations, housing affordability issues,
domestic violence groups, public safety and emergency preparedness, veterans groups, and
religious organizations.
24
The reactions in Fremont and Mountain View are not unique to these suburban cities and can
be found in other Bay Area suburbs. In interviews for a different study, an elected official in
Sunnyvale—a suburban city situated between Mountain View and San Jose—said that in his
city, since “everyone is treated equally,” the suburb does not “have many organizations or
problems” in regards to what he saw as special interest immigrant activism. Forty-three percent
of Sunnyvale’s population was foreign-born in 2006.
39
25
A study of commuting in California found that a disproportionate share of immigrants rely on
public transit and that almost half of all transit commuters in the state are foreign-born, a
significant barrier to accessing services in other cities (Handy et al. 2009: 11).
26
A Latina community leader active in an all-Latina mom’s group, as well as her child’s PTA,
contended that few city officials or local civic leaders reached out to Fremont’s Spanishspeaking population. As she recounted, “Before I was PTA President, we had two or three
Caucasian people that were involved in PTA, and letters went home, but they went home in
English…So, by me being there, and writing…in English and on the other side in Spanish…
even though there was a language barrier, the fact that I had sent the letter out in two
languages…there was a big change in [PTA] attendance.”
27
Free-riding is not always vis-à-vis big cities; a few respondents listed neighboring suburbs as
taking care of a particular immigrant-origin group. During an interview with an official on the
Fremont Senior Citizens Commission, when asked about Portuguese-origin seniors, the official
said the community is “mainly in Newark;” asked about those of Indian origin, the official
pointed to programming in Milpitas; and when asked about the city’s Vietnamese population, the
commissioner reported not knowing any Vietnamese organizations, “I know there is a
Vietnamese community, but it’s not as large as some other” communities.
28
This is the date that the IRS ruled an organization a legal nonprofit organization, a designation
necessary for CDBG funding. In many cases, organizations are founded before gaining formal
status as a charitable organization.
29
San Francisco’s 2005-10 Consolidated Plan states in its discussion of goals and definition of
community development that, “In recognition of the rapidly changing demographics and
character of San Francisco, [the Mayor’s Office of Community Development] will make funding
available to address the unanticipated needs of existing and emerging populations/ communities
that cannot be addressed through our already identified strategies. During the past 25 years, this
strategy has enabled San Francisco’s community development program to be a national leader in
using CDBG to respond quickly and effectively to the AIDS crisis, the plight of refugees and
immigrants, and the challenges of creating economic access for traditionally marginalized subpopulations” (CCSF 2006: 63).
30
This view echoed a statement in San Francisco’s official 2005-10 Consolidated Plan for
CDBG funding, which underscored, “Non-profit organizations provide an invaluable source of
information regarding the changing needs, gaps in services and successes in our community
development activities. These organizations often provide stability in neighborhoods that have
few other resources for accessible information, assistance and services” (CCSF 2006: 111).
31
Such dynamics might also be affected by the history of nonprofit service provision to poor,
native-born minorities. The four cities in our study had relatively small African American
populations. At most, only seven percent of San Francisco’s residents reported being black. It is
possible that with a larger, longstanding African American population, immigrants might benefit
from building off the black community’s civic infrastructure or face additional competition for
resources and more difficult challenges in modifying established social constructions of
disadvantaged populations.
40
Figure 1: Proportion of Foreign-born Residents, San Francisco Bay Area, ca. 2007
Source: 2005-09 American Community Survey (tract-level estimates), U.S. Census Bureau.
41
Table 1. Socio-demographic Profile of Selected Bay Area Cities, 2005-07
Total population
Non-Hispanic White (only)
Non-Hispanic Black (only)
Non-Hispanic Asian (only)
Hispanic or Latino (of any race)
Foreign born (of total population)
Naturalized U.S. citizen (of FB pop)
Recent migrant, entered US in 2000 or later (of FB pop)
Speak English less than “very well” (of FB pop ages 5+)
World region of birth (of foreign born)
Asia
Latin America
Europe
City residents in poverty*
Foreign-born residents in poverty (of all in poverty)
Children under 18 living in poverty**
Children in poverty with one or more foreign-born parents
Median individual income in past 12 months
All residents
Foreign-born residents
San Francisco
%
757,604
338,466 45
50,750
7
238,344 32
105,790 14
270,481 36%
166,504 62
50,074 19
172,782 24
San Jose
%
898,901
285,249 32
27,761
3
274,338 31
281,651 31
350,809 39%
177,498 51
74,054 21
222,585 27
Fremont
%
208,455
65,566 32
6,012
3
96,044 46
32,108 15
90,522 43%
47,683 53
18,360 20
43,978 23
Mountain View
%
71,153
33,973 48
1,052
2
17,959 25
15,136 21
28,431 40%
9,981 35
8,610 30
14,415 22
167,475 62
56,319 21
36,804 14
88,426
34,400 39%
30,628
22,228 73%
201,686 58
117,879 34
21,223
6
90,996
38,376 42%
63,312
45,020 71%
69,135 76
13,374 15
4,080
5
10,969
5,250 48%
8,094
5,789 72%
12,741 45
9,381 33
4,959 17
4,499
2,383 53%
3,528
2,865 81%
$33,984
$22,721
$32,277
$29,948
$40,541
$43,573
$45,038
$37,228
* Individuals living below 100% of the federal poverty level, past 12 months.
** Children under 18 living at 200% or less of federal poverty level, last 12 months.
Source: American Community Survey, 3-year Estimates, 2005-07 (U.S. Census Bureau 2009).
42
Table 2. Allocation of CDBG Funding to Community-based Organizations, 2004-07
San Francisco
Registered nonprofit organizations (all)*
Nonprofits registered before 1990**
Orgs per 1,000 city residents
Immigrant CBOs (percentage of all orgs)
Immigrant nonprofits registered before 1990
Imm orgs per 1,000 foreign-born residents
4,203
San Jose
1,987
Fremont
416
Mountain View
222
1,882
5.5
45.1%
898
2.2
45.6%
170
2.0
40.9%
96
3.1
43.4%
591
14.1%
412
20.7%
102
24.5%
46
20.7%
293
2.2
49.7%
122
1.2
30.0%
18
4.6
17.6%
11
7.8
23.9%
FY 2004-05, CDBG grants
Total number of CBO grantees
Total imm CBO grantees (percentage of all)
Total CBO-targeted funds
Total funds to imm CBOs (percentage of total)
130
38
$12,508,764
$4,277,258
FY 2005-06, CDBG grants
Total number of CBO grantees
Total imm CBO grantees (percentage of all)
Total CBO-targeted funds
Total funds to imm CBOs (percentage of total)
151
40
$12,924,218
$4,359,107
FY 2006-07, CDBG grants
Total number of CBO grantees
Total imm CBO grantees (percentage of all)
Total CBO-targeted funds
Total funds to imm CBOs (percentage of total)
124
41
$10,170,098
$4,107,111
29.2%
34.2%
26.5%
33.7%
33.1%
40.4%
39
7
$4,178,118
$769,430
38
7
$4,082,095
$957,307
37
7
$3,853,451
$1,060,976
17.9%
18.4%
18.4%
23.5%
18.9%
27.5%
12
0
$1,548,409
$-
14
0
$986,560
$-
10
0
$1,088,242
$-
0.0%
0.0%
0.0%
0.0%
0.0%
0.0%
9
0
$425,500
$-
8
0
$876,666
$-
8
0
$187,321
$-
0.0%
0.0%
0.0%
0.0%
0.0%
0.0%
* Officially IRS registered 501(c)(3) organizations, excluding private foundations.
** Percentage calculation excludes 44 organizations with missing information.
Sources: Authors' calculations from database of 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations from National Center for Charitable Statistics and CDBG data from the U.S.
Department of Housing and Urban Development (annual CAPER reports) for City and County of San Francisco, City of San Jose, City of Fremont, and City of
Mountain View.
43
Appendix A.1. Community-based Organizations Receiving CDBG Grants, Funding in
Dollars – Mountain View, 2004-07
CBO Grantees
FY 04-05
FY 05-06
FY 06-07
Clara Mateo Alliance Shelter
7,000
5,590
4,429
Community Services Agency
87,407
90,903
65,048
Economic and Social Opportunities
30,000
30,000
13,656
Emergency Housing Consortium
16,027
18,786
89,885
Mayview Community Health Center
8,107
6,388
5,062
Mid Peninsula Housing Coalition
-
717,328
-
Project Sentinel
-
-
3,163
Second Harvest Food Bank
8,459
4,741
3,757
Senior Adults Legal Assistance
6,000
2,930
2,322
Sierra Vista I Rehabilitation
255,000
-
-
Social Advocates for Youth
7,500
-
-
425,500
876,666
187,321
Total Funding
Source: Authors’ calculations from CDBG data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development (annual CAPER reports) for City of Mountain View.
44
Appendix A.2. Community-based Organizations Receiving CDBG Grants, Funding in
Dollars – Fremont, 2004-07
CBO Grantees
FY 04-05
FY 05-06
FY 06-07
4C’s Child Care Development
Bay Area Community Services, Adult Day
Center
-
-
19,989
36,701
36,701
36,701
Bridge Housing
800,000
50,000
-
California School for the Blind
-
27,561
-
Citizens Housing Corporation
-
50,000
-
Community Child Care Coordinating Council
19,989
19,989
-
Community Resources for Independent Living
10,100
-
-
Deaf Counseling and Referral Agency
7,000
7,000
-
ECHO
31,110
32,666
34,902
Kidango
200,064
142,443
87,736
LIFE Elder Care, Meal on Wheels
49,972
49,972
49,972
Project Sentinel
75,000
75,000
75,000
SAVE Shelter
74,042
40,228
56,228
Satellite/AEA (Satellite Housing Senior)
144,431
-
-
-
155,000
200,000
100,000
250,000
250,000
Tri-City Volunteers Facility Renovation
-
-
277,714
Women on the Way to Recovery Center
-
50,000
-
1,548,409
986,560
1,088,242
Tri City Homeless Coalition
Tri-City Health Center
Total Funding
Source: Authors’ calculations from CDBG data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development (annual CAPER reports) for City of Fremont.
45
Appendix A.3. Community-based Organizations Receiving CDBG Grants, Funding in
Dollars – San Jose, 2004-07
Immigrant Organizations
FY 04-05
36,103
FY 05-06
34,297
FY 06-07
30,290
36,202
-
-
-
241,796
250,000
Mexican-American Community Services Agency
333,899
287,011
253,481
Portuguese Organization for Social Services
130,357
110,803
245,592
Santa Clara County Asian Law Alliance
55,855
50,269
44,395
Vietnamese Voluntary Foundation
Yu-Ai Kai/Japanese American Community Senior
Service
84,043
76,738
70,211
92,971
36,103
156,393
34,297
167,007
30,290
FY 04-05
FY 05-06
FY 06-07
Alliance for Community Care
21,721
20,635
20,635
Bill Wilson Center
41,374
39,305
34,712
Catholic Charities of San Jose
180,534
226,582
203,295
Community Technology Alliance
21,793
20,703
20,703
Concern for the Poor
30,410
-
-
Deaf Community, Advocacy and Referral Agency
29,040
27,588
27,588
Economic and Social Opportunities
560,000
541,622
560,000
Emergency Housing Consortium
63,095
56,785
50,149
Family Supportive Housing
-
28,889
28,889
Franklin-McKinley Education Foundation
-
202,007
-
Fresh Lifelines for Youth
40,006
81,828
72,266
Friends Outside in Santa Clara County
31,030
-
-
InnVision
108,606
103,176
93,875
Kidango
193,287
-
-
Legal Aid Society of Santa Clara County
269,069
242,621
214,257
Live Oak Adult Day Services
30,496
28,971
28,971
Loaves and Fishes Family Kitchen
20,687
19,653
19,563
Mental Health Advocacy Project
24,824
23,583
23,583
Next Door Solutions to Domestic Violence
116,882
121,953
107,701
Ethiopian Community Services
Filipino-American Senior Opportunity Development
Korean-American Community Center
Total Funding, Immigrant CBOs
Non-immigrant Organizations
46
Outreach & Escort, Inc.
-
45,347
40,048
Project Sentinel
267,615
258,833
228,550
Rebuilding Together Silicon Valley
45,000
43,523
60,000
Respite and Research for Alzheimer’s Disease
31,030
29,478
29,478
Sacred Heart Community Services
25,859
24,566
24,566
San Jose Conservation Corps
187,061
162,830
149,649
San Jose Smart Start Family Childcare
208,781
-
-
Santa Clara County Black Chamber of Commerce
93,920
90,838
93,920
Santa Clara University
54,927
26,531
26,531
Santa Clara Valley Blind Center
108,427
101,004
95,131
Second Harvest Food Bank
18,618
17,687
17,687
Senior Adult Legal Assistance
91,023
81,921
72,348
Services for Brain Impaired
20,687
19,653
19,653
Silicon Valley Economic Development Corp
287,481
278,047
287,481
Silicon Valley Independent Living Center
10,343
9,826
9,826
YWCA in Santa Clara Valley
175,062
148,803
131,420
3,408,688
3,124,788
2,792,475
Total Funding, Non-immigrant CBOs
Source: Authors’ calculations from CDBG data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development (annual CAPER reports) for City of San Jose.
47
Appendix A.4. Community-based Organizations Receiving CDBG Grants, Funding in
Dollars – San Francisco, 2004-07
Immigrant CBOs
FY 04-05
FY 05-06
FY 06-07
African Immigrant and Refugee Resource Center
67,000
77,000
30,000
Arab Cultural and Community Center
60,000
40,000
38,000
Arriba Juntos
38,000
38,000
110,000
-
25,000
43,000
Asian, Inc.
211,180
210,889
175,000
Asian Law Caucus
55,500
55,500
53,500
Asian Neighborhood Design
391,000
269,000
292,860
Asian Pacific American Community Center
67,500
60,000
58,000
Asian Women’s Shelter
39,500
31,500
35,500
-
15,000
60,000
Brava! for the Women in the Arts
47,000
47,000
45,000
Career Resources Development Center
90,000
80,000
-
Central American Resource Center (CARECEN)
55,000
40,000
-
Centro del Pueblo
-
-
58,000
Centro Latino de San Francisco
-
-
50,000
Charity Cultural Services Center
125,000
100,000
80,000
Chinatown Community Development Center
431,761
420,535
435,000
Chinese for Affirmative Action
110,000
115,000
100,000
Chinese Newcomers Service Center
106,000
106,000
96,000
-
-
40,000
Dolores Street Community Services
12,000
-
-
Donaldina Cameron House
45,000
115,000
35,000
Filipino-American Council of SF
50,000
-
-
Filipino-American Development Foundation
205,000
85,000
190,000
Gum Moon Residence Hall
-
15,000
15,000
Institute Familiar de la Raza
-
-
45,000
Instituto Laboral de la Raza
68,000
68,000
68,000
Japanese Community Youth Council
-
-
100,000
Jewish Family & Children’s Services
-
67,744
-
Jewish Vocational and Career Counseling Service
81,317
90,300
60,000
La Casa de las Madres
52,000
-
77,000
La Raza Centro Legal
125,000
125,000
115,000
Asian & Pacific Islander Wellness Center
Bindlestiff Studio
Chinese Progressive Association
48
La Raza Community Resource Center
-
50,000
50,000
Manilatown Heritage Foundation
-
20,000
-
Mission Economic Development Association
417,000
460,000
383,000
Mission Hiring Hall, Inc.
131,000
119,000
162,250
Mission Language and Vocational School, Inc.
125,000
275,000
125,000
Mission Learning Center
106,500
75,000
75,000
Mission Neighborhood Centers
70,000
205,000
92,000
Mujeres Unidas y Activas
50,000
-
50,000
Nihonmachi Legal Outreach
93,000
57,639
93,001
Nihonmachi Little Friends
67,000
-
-
On Lok Day Services
San Francisco Conservation Corps - Wu Yee-Generations
Child Development
114,000
100,000
-
-
60,000
-
Self-Help for the Elderly
80,500
80,500
207,000
Southeast Asian Community Center
226,500
226,500
200,000
Vietnamese Community Center of SF
50,000
50,000
35,000
Vietnamese Elderly Mutual Assistance Association
35,000
50,000
35,000
Vietnamese Youth Development Center
-
-
40,000
West Bay Pilipino Multi-Service Corp.
95,000
95,000
-
Wu Yee Children’s Services
84,000
139,000
55,000
Total Funding, Immigrant CBOs
4,277,258
4,359,107
4,107,111
Non-immigrant CBOs
FY 04-05
50,000
FY 05-06
30,000
FY 06-07
-
245,000
55,000
-
A Home Away from Homelessness
-
-
35,000
AIDS Housing Alliance
-
25,000
35,000
AIDS Legal Referral Panel of the SF Bay Area
39,500
78,190
84,500
Arc Ecology
20,000
20,000
-
Ark of Refuge
439,364
12,000
-
Bar Association of SF Volunteer Legal Services
30,000
-
-
-
40,000
-
Bay Area Legal Aid
42,000
42,000
40,000
Bay Area Video Coalition
100,000
60,000
-
-
23,000
-
Acorn Institute, Inc.
African American Art & Cultural Complex
Bay Area Community Resources
Bayview Community Collaborative
49
Bayview Hunter’s Point Center for Arts & Technology
-
40,000
103,000
Bayview Hunter’s Point Multipurpose Center
-
60,000
-
Bayview Hunter’s Point Multipurpose Senior Services
-
15,000
-
Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center
248,800
210,000
215,000
Board of Trustees of the Glide Foundation
186,000
30,000
48,000
Booker T. Washington Community Service Center
61,000
61,000
45,000
Boys & Girls Clubs of San Francisco
80,400
624,350
-
Brothers Against Guns
55,000
-
40,000
-
20,000
-
Catholic Charities CYO
61,500
76,500
45,000
Central City Hospitality House
92,150
51,650
31,650
Children’s Council of SF
30,000
30,000
60,000
Clever Homes LLC
223,125
126,000
-
Community Alliance for Special Education (CASE)
Community Center Pjt of SF dba SF LGBT Community
Center
25,000
25,000
25,000
Community Design Center
155,437
100,000
35,000
100,000
-
Community Housing Partnership
96,085
122,000
115,000
Community United Against Violence
27,000
27,000
27,000
Community Vocational Enterprises
41,500
51,875
50,000
Community Youth Center-San Francisco (CYC-SF)
73,000
73,000
71,000
Compass Community Services
37,000
37,000
37,000
CompassPoint Nonprofit Services
103,950
43,950
35,000
Conard House, Inc.
2,100
-
-
Earned Asset Resource Network (EARN)
25,000
50,000
50,000
Economic Opportunity Council of SF
25,000
15,000
38,000
Ella Hill Hutch Community Center
203,200
225,000
140,290
Episcopal Community Services of SF
30,000
100,000
100,000
Eviction Defense Collaborative, Inc.
-
25,000
30,000
Family School
-
50,000
-
226,000
-
-
Friends of the Urban Forest
-
60,000
40,000
Friendship House Association of American Indians
-
-
36,900
Girls After School Academy
Goodwill Industries of San Francisco, San Mateo & Marin
Counties
-
40,000
40,000
-
-
75,000
California Lawyers for the Arts
Family Service Agency
50
210,000
100,000
94,000
-
27,600
27,600
Haight Ashbury Food Program
65,000
45,000
25,000
Haight Ashbury Play Program for Youth (HAPPY)
35,000
-
-
Hearing and Speech Center of Northern California
45,000
55,000
45,000
Henry Ohlhoff House
120,000
-
-
Holy Family Day Home
-
33,500
-
Homeless Children’s Network
-
40,000
-
Homeless Prenatal Program, Inc.
-
-
80,000
Hunter’s Point Boys and Girls Club
30,000
20,000
-
Hunter’s Point Community Youth Park Foundation
125,000
105,000
-
Independent Living Resource Center of SF
60,000
60,000
60,000
Ingleside Community Center
70,500
63,450
60,000
Inner City Youth
20,000
50,000
-
Iris Center
-
50,000
-
Jamestown Community Center
-
-
60,000
John W. King Senior Center
125,000
100,000
100,000
Juma Ventures
55,000
75,610
70,610
Larkin Street Youth Services
61,000
61,000
61,000
Lavender Youth Rec. & Info. Ct. (LYRIC)
80,000
66,000
65,000
Legal Assistance to the Elderly
30,000
30,000
30,000
-
-
50,000
Literacy For Environmental Justice
19,000
-
-
Lutheran Church of Our Savior
34,000
59,900
-
Lyon-Martin Women’s Health Services
77,500
77,500
77,500
Mission Education Projects, Inc.
65,000
50,000
37,500
National Community Development Institute
40,000
25,000
-
Network for Elders
58,000
63,000
50,000
New Leaf Services for our Community
55,000
55,000
55,000
Northeast Community Federal Credit Union
195,000
230,000
210,000
Northern California Community Loan Fund
40,000
40,000
-
Northern California Service League
68,000
68,000
66,000
Opnet Community Ventures, Inc.
50,000
100,000
-
Portola Family Connections
50,000
85,000
48,000
-
95,000
-
GP/TODCO, Inc.
Growth and Learning Opportunities, Inc.
Life Frames, Inc.
Positive Resource Center
51
Potrero Hill Neighborhood House
15,000
30,000
-
Positive Resource Center
115,000
-
90,000
Private Industry Council of SF
70,000
-
-
Providence Foundation
41,600
15,000
-
-
20,000
-
Recreation Center for the Handicapped
70,000
-
-
Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center
436,500
428,500
350,000
Renaissance Parents for Success
125,000
100,000
-
Richmond District Neighborhood Center
26,000
12,000
30,000
Sage Project
141,000
15,000
-
Samoan Community Development Center
60,000
60,000
60,000
San Francisco Child Abuse Prevention Center - Talk
32,500
32,500
30,000
-
-
44,845
-
-
23,510
-
50,000
-
-
55,000
64,000
-
-
40,000
-
54,544
34,592
San Francisco Housing Development Corporation
-
250,000
20,000
100,000
San Francisco Lighthouse
-
-
25,000
San Francisco Parents Who Care
-
15,000
-
20,000
-
410,000
-
25,000
70,000
South of Market Foundation
100,000
100,000
100,000
Southwest Community Corporation
120,000
66,500
88,000
St. John’s Educational Thresholds Center
25,500
25,500
-
St. Vincent de Paul Society of San Francisco
45,000
45,000
45,000
Sunset District Comm. Development. Corporation
70,000
75,000
-
-
-
50,000
Swords to Ploughshares Veterans Rights Organization
40,000
40,000
40,000
Telegraph Hill Neighborhood Association
125,000
102,000
30,000
Rebuilding Together San Francisco
SF Conservation Corps - Bernal Heights State Pre-School
SF Conservation Corps - Catholic Charities – Children’s
Village
San Francisco Conservation Corps - Dr. Martin Luther
King Childcare Center
San Francisco Conservation Corps - Noe Valley Co-op
Nursery
San Francisco Conservation Corps - Rainbow Infant Center
San Francisco Conservation Corps - Sojourner Truth Child
Care
SF Conservation Corps - Whitney Young CDC
San Francisco Foundation Community Initiative
Funds/SFFSN
San Francisco Study Center
Somarts Cultural Center (w/ partners)
Sunset Youth Services
52
Tenderloin AIDS Resource Center
10,000
-
-
Tenderloin Housing Clinic, Inc.
87,500
87,500
87,500
Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation
358,000
288,000
271,000
The Arc of San Francisco
-
175,000
-
The Janet Pomeroy Center
The Volunteer Center Serving San Francisco and San
Mateo Counties
-
87,000
100,000
Tides Center
29,600
89,000
29,600
361,361
284,361
Together United Recommitted Forever (TURF)
15,000
50,000
50,000
Toolworks
47,000
47,000
56,085
United Council of Human Services
-
58,575
-
Urban Housing and Development Corporation
-
25,000
50,000
34,000
-
-
Urban University
-
50,000
50,000
URSA Institute
-
25,000
-
Visitacion Valley Community Center, Inc.
54,000
203,000
-
Visitacion Valley Community Development Corporation
271,000
266,000
-
Visitacion Valley JET
100,000
90,000
-
Walden House
-
-
16,000
Westside Community Services
-
45,000
30,000
Women’s Foundation of California
-
85,000
35,000
Women’s Initiative for Self Employment
100,000
100,000
100,000
YMCA of San Francisco - Chinatown
115,000
-
-
YMCA of San Francisco - Richmond
67,600
11,000
-
Young Community Developers
218,595
75,000
73,000
8,231,506
8,565,111
6,062,987
Urban Resource Systems
Total Funding, Non-immigrant CBOs
Source: Authors’ calculations from CDBG data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development (annual CAPER reports) for City and County of San Francisco.
53